A New Perspective on Flexible Human Resource Practices and Older Workers’ Early Retirement Intention

Abstract

Prior research has addressed multiple factors that contribute to older workers’ early retirement intentions; however, little is known about how and why organizational HR practices can proactively discourage older employees from retiring early. Guided by role perspectives, we propose that flexible HR practices decrease older workers’ early retirement intentions by dealing with their role conflicts (work-family conflict), and that the relationship between role conflicts and early retirement intentions is contingent on the gender role difference. Data were collected from Chinese companies with a matching sample of 228 older workers (aged 45-60) from 48 organizations, and multilevel path analysis was carried out to test these hypotheses. The results showed that flexible HR practices have a negative indirect relationship with early retirement intentions through decreased family-to-work conflict. The influence of work-family conflicts on early retirement intention is stronger for women than men. We also found that the effect of work-to-family conflict on early retirement intention is stronger than that of family-to-work conflict, demonstrating that “work-push” factors exert greater influence on early retirement intention than “family-pull” factors. Theoretical contributions and practical implications to early retirement research and the retention of aging workers were also discussed