Understanding Bridge Employment Through the Lenses of Kaleidoscope Career Model

Abstract

Demographic transition has changed the landscape of retirement worldwide. For many, retirement is no longer an endpoint to working life, but rather a beginning to another stretch of workforce participation in the form of bridge employment (Engelhardt, 2012). The academic literature has examined why people return to work after retirement. However, there is a dearth of literature examining how to make workplaces suitable for people coming out of retirement. Research demonstrates that retirement is a critical life event, and thus, has significant impact on peoples’ attitude towards subsequent phases of their lives (Wang & Shi, 2014). Based on this premise, we explored how retirees re-construct retirement from hindsight. Another purpose of our research was to examine whether retirees distinguish between pre-and post-retirement work. Our analysis of 26 in-depth interviews involving bridge employees revealed that though retirement meant different things to different participants, the view that retirement was a point of departure from an obligatory bread-winner role was a robust one. This seemingly liberating conceptualization of retirement changed the priorities of people in their post-retirement work. Using the Kaleidoscope Career Model, we analyzed how bridge employees distinguish between their pre and post-retirement work. We found that putting oneself first, making a meaningful contribution and having flexibility to pursue pleasure took priority over career goals. Getting a realistic picture of how retirees prioritize different goals in their lives and how they situate work in post- retirement life is an important contribution to the career literature, one which we feel can spawn future research.