Abordaje de la depresión desde D Winnicott.

As is mentioned above, with an aging population and concerns that Canada will soon be facing labour and skill shortages, efforts have been made to increase the labour force participation of older individuals. This commitment has spawned a number of research efforts aimed at discovering what factors are associated with older individuals resuming labour force activity after retirement. The development of incentives for continued work activity after retirement must be informed by knowledge of the personal, structural, and demographic factors that are associated with return to work activity after a first retirement. The present study will build on work that has already been done on this topic through an analysis that considers the various interactions that may occur among factors that are associated with involvement in post-retirement work activity.

The recent past has seen large numbers of older men and older women working until later in life than past retirement statistics would have led us to predict (Cahill, Giandrea, and Quinn 2006, 2007). Currently, about one-half of retiring individuals follow a nonstandard path to full retirement that involves partial retirement and/or returns to the labour force after an episode of retirement (Maestas 2010). Some scholars claim that many present-day workers will seek to gradually leave the workforce instead of making one transition from full-time employment to full retirement (Davis 2003; Dendinger et al. 2005; Morrow-Howell 2007; Pengcharoen and Shultz 2010). Workers who are approaching retirement might seek work arrangements involving fewer hours of work and lower levels of responsibility, greater flexibility in how they arrange their work schedule, as well as the opportunity to take up shared positions. This staged withdrawal from the workforce allows for a gradual process of adjustment to life as a retiree (Pengcharoen and Shultz 2010).

There are individual and organizational benefits to older individuals carrying on with work activities after formal retirement. At the level of the individual, some research shows that taking on bridge employment is related to higher levels of satisfaction with life and with retirement, as well as being beneficial for physical and mental health (Pengcharoen and Shultz 2010). Kim and Feldman (2000) draw on Atchley’s (1989) continuity theory of aging, which suggests that successful aging occurs when elderly individuals maintain a lifestyle similar to that of their earlier years, and argue that bridge employment allows older workers to avoid a sudden, dramatic, and highly stressful change in daily patterns after retirement. They also draw on continuity theory when they state that bridge employment provides older workers with the opportunity to maintain valued social connections with co-workers.

Bridge employment can be of great benefit to organizations for several reasons. Downsizing companies often lack full precision in differentiating between their good and their less effective employees. The loss of talent that thereby occurs pressures companies to either rehire some of the workers they have laid off or to train new employees (Davis 2003). In this and in other staffing issues, the practice of bridge employment benefits organizations (Davis 2003; Kim and Feldman 2000). Through this practice, labour

shortages are reduced, compensation for the loss of experienced employees is accomplished, and training costs are mitigated (Davis 2003). The possibility of engaging in bridge employment can serve as an incentive to encourage older workers to undergo an early retirement. Additionally, bridge employees provide organizations with highly skilled and more easily accessed alternatives to contingent workers as a means of overcoming staffing difficulties (Kim and Feldman 2000). Caputo (2006) emphasises the productivity and high capacity of older workers and argues that society will benefit much from the enactment of policy that will attract older workers to prolong their labour force involvement.

For the reasons noted above, it is important to better understand what influences involvement in paid work after retirement. Numerous advantages can accrue to the effective management of individuals, organizations, and the larger society through successful efforts to understand the factors that impact the retirement decisions and behaviours of older individuals. Understanding the underlying processes involved will result in greater success as workers and retirees, in higher levels of well-being in places of work and in retirement, as well as in more satisfactory processes of adjustment to the changes involved with growing older (Pengcharoen and Shultz 2010). Davis (2003) adds that knowledge of the factors involved in post-retirement work decisions can help with the management of early retirements and of the employment issues with which both individual people and organizations are confronted.

Retired individuals have numerous motivations to return to work. Some are not financially secure enough to fully retire, while others find themselves disliking retirement or missing the social, productive, and challenging aspects of work (Pengcharoen and Shultz 2010; Statistics Canada 2006). These motivations imply that an elderly individual might return to work after retirement for the purpose of intrinsic satisfaction. Among the American adults aged 50 to 70 years who were surveyed in the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures 2005 New Face of Work Survey, the four most prominent aspects of the work they expected to perform in retirement were: “staying involved with other people (59 percent), having a job with a sense of purpose (57 percent), having an additional income source (52 percent), and having a job that benefits or helps the community (46

percent)” (Gonyea and Googins 2006-07:79, 80). Maestas (2010) studied individuals who expected not to return to work after retirement. She found that those who nonetheless returned to work were more likely to have found themselves not enjoying retirement as much as they had expected than they were to have received unfortunate news about their financial circumstances. Morrow-Howell (2007) argues that the majority of those aged 45 years and older who hope to work past the “normal” retirement age plan to do so for reasons of income and health insurance, and that almost a third plan to do so for interest and pleasure. This shows that a substantial proportion of those who plan to work in later life plan to do so for intrinsic benefits.