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To: Chispas who wrote (22453)	1/30/2005 3:07:26 PM
From: Chispas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Highly Skilled Retirees Take Note ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .... CHICAGO TRIBUNE By: Barbara Rose January 30, 2005 When Nancy Norton took early retirement after 26 years at Monsanto Co. to care for her ill mother, she thought she had left the corporate world for good. But three months after her mother died, Monsanto offered the 53-year-old audit manager a deal she couldn't refuse. She took an assignment that allowed her to resume working without doing so full-time job and without giving up retiree benefits. Monsanto's program -- a rarity in the business world -- is a harbinger of a future in which retirees and older workers will be offered the chance to leave work gradually, opting for more flexible hours and less responsibility until they retire altogether. Such programs, including one co-founded by Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., represent a dramatic shift in a society that for decades devised increasingly rich incentives to replace older employees with less expensive younger workers. With the oldest of 76 million baby boomers turning 60 next year, employers face a new challenge. The mass retirement over the next three decades threatens to drain companies of vital skills. "It's an incredibly serious problem," said retirement expert Rudolph Penner of the Washington-based Urban Institute. "Almost every projection of economic growth has quite a substantial slowdown in coming decades because of the labor force growth rate slowdown." Keeping people working longer is in step with surveys indicating that many older employees want to continue working. Many would be encouraged to postpone retirement longer if they could cut back gradually, according to Penner and others who advocate making phased retirement a routine benefit. One reason employers have steered clear of phased retirement is the potential barriers posed by pension rules and age-discrimination laws. Programs such as Monsanto's get around constraints by requiring retirees be gone from the company at least six months before hiring on again part time. A pending rule change by the Internal Revenue Service would give companies far more flexibility by allowing workers to start drawing pension benefits at age 59 1/2 while working fewer hours. Pension payments would be prorated based on hours worked. To collect benefits under existing rules, workers 64 or younger must leave, forcing those who need pension payments to quit and take part-time jobs elsewhere. "Staying at their career employer is far superior," said Sylvester Schieber of human resources consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide. "They're going to be more productive and create more value for the economy and themselves using what they've learned in their jobs." Other big employers are devising ways to hire highly skilled retirees. In 2003 Procter & Gamble of Cincinnati and Eli Lilly founded YourEncore, a company that signs up retired scientists, engineers and product developers, and makes them available to prospective employers on a contract basis. YourEncore handles marketing, placement and billing for 450 retired experts from 150 firms. indystar.com