All mothers are working mothers.
– unknown

A study by financial institution ING called Retirement Revealed reported that women are significantly less prepared for retirement than men. Men have saved an average of $149,000 for retirement (among those who have savings inside or outside of employer-sponsored retirement plans). Women averaged $108,000 in total savings. For women with children at home, retirement savings was $88,000.

Coming as it did the week before Mother’s Day, the study struck a chord. As a near-boomer myself (I was born just a few months too early), in my lifetime there have been many changes in cultural and financial mores for working women. After “Rosie the Riveter” powered the factories to supply the military for World War II, society changed to a family structure with many traditional working fathers and stay-at-home mothers raising children. As boomers took hold and changed America starting in the 1960s, women headed to the workplace in droves in the 1970s.

Women may have less saved for retirement than men simply because they have “stopped out” of the workforce for a number of years in favor of the duties and joys of Motherhood. Divorce, too, has taken its toll on women’s retirement savings as they often have to feed, clothe and shelter themselves and children without the benefit of a second salary from a spouse.

Mothers take care of so many things in the world. Judging by the numbers, they also need to take better care of their own retirement.

The good news is that women now have greater freedom in the workplace and the economy than ever before. Women have more capabilities and flexibility to start businesses, opt for non-traditional retirement approaches, and pursue flexible work arrangements.

A Mother’s work is never done. And neither are the changes in the workplace finished.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs… since the payment is pure love.
– Mildred B. Vermont

– Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

Never before has our country, or even the world, been inhabited by so many “older” people.  Today, one out of nine Americans is considered old. Every eight seconds someone turns 50. In 2010 the 45-to-64 year old population grew 31.5%. This extraordinary phenomenon is documented in the latest U.S. Census Bureau brief on the data from the 2010 Census.

People are living productive lives into their 80s. But that doesn’t mean people will stay in the traditional workforce longer. Baby boomers are redefining retirement. They will continue to work in a new, flexible way that will benefit businesses, society, their families, and themselves.  A survey by Del Webb found that half of retirees expect to work at least part time and they’ll want offices in their homes. Forty percent of them already have high-speed Internet connections and two or more computers.

Business owners and HR managers should start thinking about how to adapt their workplace to take advantage of this extraordinary talent.

How is your insurance firm changing to reflect these demographic changes?

– Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

Employee Benefit Adviser reported

Not surprising so far. But what I read next was staggering, even though I have sensed it for a long time: “Only 11% of current retirees currently work.”

That’s absolutely great news for employers. That means that 89 percent of insurance retirees are potentially available to hire.

Of course, not all retirees want to work or are suited for a position that’s available. But the fact is: Employers can radically expand their recruiting territory by including retirees in their pool of candidates. In this wide-open field, most have decades of experience with a range of organizations through a variety of business conditions.

Employers can tap in to those candidates and gain their experience. The price tag can be cheaper than employers typically need to pay, because vintage employees need less training. Our experience with WAHVE over the past two years, for instance, shows that vintage workers can be up and working in a short timeframe.

What’s more, if employees are provided flexible work arrangements (such as working from home, working remotely, and/or working part-time), then the employer avoids many of the costs of housing and equipping them.

Many employers simply aren’t accustomed to hiring retirees, probably because of the inertia of their decades-old hiring and human resources practices. But for many, those practices need to change – because the insurance industry doesn’t have the pool of young candidates it had decades ago when it developed those hiring and HR habits.

In your experience, what obstacles do insurance employers face that prevent them from considering hiring retirees?

– Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

We at WAHVE recognize a lot of what is reported in those studies, and often find ourselves nodding in agreement.

However, we see an entirely different motivation for many pre-retirees and retirees in the insurance industry. In our work placing vintage employees with employers in the insurance industry, we find that workers are motivated typically by professional and psychological reasons (namely, they want to keep their minds and bodies engaged in the professional careers they’ve spent a lifetime building).

The surveys, by contrast, typically point out that desperate (if not dire) financial straits that some Americans find themselves in are their motivation for continuing to work.

Whatever boomers’ motivation is, they’re considering working longer.

Retirement was once considered a defined moment, a true fork in the road. Now, to more Americans, it’s becoming a bend in the road.

What’s your plan: Do you look forward to retiring and changing pace completely, or do you want to continue working in some way?

– Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

That’s a finding from the fifth annual MetLife “Study of the American Dream,” as reported by Michael Stanley in LifeHealthPro.com, the online home of National Underwriter Life & Health.

According to the article, which reported on more than 2,400 online surveys conducted for the MetLife study:

• The American dream is becoming more individualized and less homogenized and collective.

• Non-financial elements are more important. “Self-fulfillment and maintaining meaningful and rewarding relationships have eclipsed more utilitarian aspects of the dream such as financial and professional success,” reported the article.

• Wealth and success are distinct: 70% of those surveyed stated that wealth is not a requirement for achieve the American dream

• Three quarters of survey respondents viewed a financial safety net as essential to the American dream. But only 3 of 10 perceived their own safety net as adequate

• Half of boomers who responded said they had a weak plan set up for retirement savings.

How has your view of the American dream changed as you have advanced in your career and life? What do you see around you in your region of the country?

–Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

Comedian Jimmy Fallon cracked the following joke in his opening monologue on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012 on his show “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”:

“At age 64, Giants coach Tom Coughlin could become the oldest coach to win the Super Bowl. Instead of saying ‘I’m going to Disney World,’ he’ll be like: ‘I’m going to walk around the mall before it opens.’”

That stereotype took a hit: Four days later, Coughlin’s New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI, toppling the New England Patriots, 21-17. Coughlin, the oldest coach in the National Football League, has now won two Super Bowls in the last four years.

Talk about a generation gap: Coughlin is 30-40 years older than his players. He’s managed to inspire and lead people many years younger in one of the most competitive environments in America.

Football writers and analysts have commented on the reasons for Coughlin’s success (although of course some of those same analysts in the past have called for him to be fired at various points in the past couple of seasons).

What has contributed to Coughlin’s success? Here are some key traits he displays:

Discipline – The Giants’ coach brings structure and methods to his team.

Experience – Coughlin served as an assistant coach on NFL teams and also worked at the college level. Others gave him an opportunity to take responsibility and grow as a coach.

Judgment – The basic success of any professional coach depends on finding the right combination of talented players, and then coaching them to success. That means Coughlin needed systems for discerning what traits he was looking for in players, and then methods for coaching them. That’s another way of saying his effectiveness was by design (born of experience), not by accident.

Interdependence – A coach’s success is proportional to the success that his players and coaching staff achieve. A coach has to win with his team, not despite them. A team needs leaders and workers to have success.

What traits do you see in effective, experienced managers and leaders (whether men or women) that you’ve worked with and for in the insurance industry?

Photo courtesy OldGuysRule.com

The headlines come nearly every week: A poll or survey shows that boomers are anxious, worried or at the very least concerned about their ability to have enough retirement savings to actually retire.

The articles cite as the causes of concern for boomers:

1)    the economic slump

2)    struggling home prices

3)    stock market uncertainties

4)    high unemployment, and/or

5)    job market shifts.

Here are four stories from just the past few months:

Survey: 25% of Employees Say They Need to Work Until Age 80 (ProgramBusiness.com) stated that “workers are coming to terms with the fact that they aren’t saving enough” for retirement.

80 Is The New 65 When It Comes to Retirement (Employee Benefit News) reported that “Three-fourths of those surveyed said they expect to work in their retirement years.”

Oldest Baby Boomers Face Jobs Bust (The Wall Street Journal) reported that “more than four million Americans aged 55 to 64” can’t find full-time work, a number has nearly doubled in five years, as per U.S. Department of Labor.

Poll: Boomers’ Anxiety About Retirement Grows (LifeHealthPro.com) reported on the October 2011 Associated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll. This survey from fall 2011 found that 73 percent of boomers plan to work past retirement, up from 67 percent this spring.

Working longer (to sustain income) and cutting back (to reduce expenses) are two practical ways for boomers to save more for retirement.

There’s been a growing acceptance of work-at-home part-time and full-time arrangements and other flexible work arrangements in the insurance industry since WAHVE was founded less than two years ago. I believe that an expanding niche of insurance retirees will postpone retirement and continue working. This will provide insurance veterans with the supplemental income they need as well as provide employers with insurance expertise and experience to power their businesses.

What do you think: Do you see insurance workplaces being more flexible this year than they have been in years past?

– Sharon Emek, Ph.D.
Founder and CEO
WAHVE

The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain

• “The most important difference between older brains and younger brains is also the easiest to overlook: Older brains have learned more than younger brains. Many aspects of life are simply too complicated and subtle to learn quickly, which is why experience counts in so many spheres of life.”

• “The United States has one of the highest labor force participation rates for persons aged 65 or older in the developed world, surpassed in 1999-2000 only by Japan, Iceland, and Portugal. In other words, the dividing line between ‘career’ and ‘retirement’ is not only moving into higher ages, it is also becoming more blurry, with more people opting for phased retirement options that allow them to work part-time …”

• “Strikingly, more than half of those I interviewed – women and men alike, up to age 75 – said they would like to work at least part-time if the right job were available.”

- The brain doesn’t grow new cells.
- “Older adults cannot learn” like young people can.
- “Connections between neurons are relatively fixed” during a person’s lifetime.
- Intelligence is a result of “how many neurons” a person has and “how fast those neurons work.”

Cohen asserts that “these ‘facts’ are wrong.” In contrast, he posits: “The brain is more resilient, adaptable, and capable than we long thought …” He notes that:

The human brain “is continually resculpting itself in response to experience and learning.”

- New brain cells “form throughout life.”
- A person’s “emotional circuitry matures and becomes more balanced with age.”
- The two hemispheres of the brain “are more equally used by older adults.”

Now that we know that people can change, it’s fair to ask whether employers can change too—and view remote, part-time, virtual and other non-traditional work arrangements as productive.

Those are key takeaways from The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain by Gene D. Cohen.

This groundbreaking book provides much guidance for marketers, employers and family members dealing with those over age 50.

Cohen’s book points out that “with age can come a new feeling of inner freedom, self-confidence, and liberation from social constraints that allows for novel or bold behavior.”

The book opens with a bold quote:

“Your brain never stops developing and changing. It’s been doing it from the time you were an embryo, and will keep on doing it all your life. And this ability, perhaps, represents its greatest strength.” – James Trefil, physicist and author

In future posts, WAHVE’s blog will explore lessons and learnings from Cohen’s book. To put it mildly, Cohen will convince many that you can teach a mature dog a new trick or two.