I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement lately.  Not mine, but how organizations could gain better insight into what level of retirement will actually happen in their companies.  You hear so many stories about fifty percent eligible to retire in next few years, but it never works that way exactly, and it is not just the current economy.  It seems that most people are surprised by how many fewer retire than expected or how many more than expected retire.

Maybe there’s some underlying pattern that we do not see and if that pattern were understood we would study the problem differently.  What if there is a set of behavioral categories that each has its own retirement rules and that could be used to better understand the retirement risks organizations are facing?

Here is a draft idea of 4 underlying groups.

Early retirees. This is always a small part of the workforce… people with a compelling reason to leave the workforce early even if their benefits are not fully accrued.  This is a small part of the workforce that has it’s own trend.

Calendar counters. This is the retirement stereotype, but it definitely does exist.  This is the group that even in a bad economy could be easily convinced by a voluntary attrition program.  In a pension or defined contribution environment, these people are going to move out once they receive their points, or within a couple of years.  They will not modulate their underlying behavior that much unless facing real duress.

Realists. This group would be most impacted by macro issues such as the overall economy and state of the market, life expectancy, children in college, and the like.  And not just major events like the Great Recession.  But also more moderate shifts in the economy and marketplace.  This group defies typical retirement point models based on age and tenure, because those point systems were put in place when different realities were in place for life expectancy and lifestyle in general.

Wedded to work. There are some people who do not like to leave the workforce.  It’s part of their identity.  They stay beyond the early retirees, the calendar counters and the realists.  And they have no sudden spike, but gradually attrite as they can no longer work.