Abstract
PurposeTo study the workers’ perception of the quality of work community and its association with intention to retire early, separately among women and men working in Finnish postal service.MethodsA questionnaire survey was sent to all Finnish postal services employees aged ≥ 50 years in 2016 and 44% (n = 2096) replied to the survey (mean age 56.3, 40% women). Employee’s intention to retire before statutory retirement was measured on a scale of 1–5 and dichotomized. The quality of work community was defined by four composite variables: equality at work, flexibility at work, supportive work environment and health or other reason and trichotomized by their tercile values. Odds ratio (ORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for associations of quality of work community with intention to retire were calculated separately for men and women using log binomial regression models adjusted for potential confounders.ResultsAbout one-third of respondents intended to retire early with no significant gender difference in retirement intention. Low equality at work (women OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.60–4.81; men 2.84, 1.80–4.48) and low flexibility at work (women 3.30, 1.94–5.60; men 2.91, 1.88–4.50) was associated with higher likelihood of intention to retire. Among women intention to retire was found less likely due to low supportive work environment (0.52, 0.31–0.89) and among men due to intermediate health or other reason (0.65, 043–0.98).ConclusionThe results highlight the importance of the quality of work community as well as the promotion of work-related health in order to encourage employees to remain at workforce for longer.
Highlights
The world is facing a challenge of population aging and parallelly, labor force is shrinking (Aiyar and Ebeke 2016)
Using a cross-sectional design, we aimed to study how the quality of work environment is associated with intention to retire early before the statutory retirement age, separately among women and men, working in Finnish postal service
We found that about one third of the employees intended to retire before statutory retirement age, with no significant gender difference
Summary
The world is facing a challenge of population aging and parallelly, labor force is shrinking (Aiyar and Ebeke 2016). Owing to low fertility and increasing life expectancy, the share of population at working age (20–64 years) will drop. This means a challenge for policy makers to find ways to keep people working longer to balance the dependency. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health (Wahrendorf et al 2013) Financial advantage for those working beyond pensionable age was introduced in Finland in 2005 through a pension reform, which motivated ageing workers to prolong their working careers. Stressful work environment has been reported as a major barrier to prolong working careers beyond statutory retirement age (Carlstedt et al 2018; Carr et al 2016; Hintsa et al 2015). Organizational changes, conflicts at work, significant work pressures, high physical work demands and lacking opportunities to utilize one’s skills and knowledge at work within the organization have been reported as factors that push people towards retirement (Reeuwijk et al 2013)
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