Early retirement
In 2005 four out of every ten pensioners took early retirement; in 2010 this had risen to 58%. An ever-increasing number of people are choosing to take early retirement and this will increase further in the next few years as the legal retirement age is being increased gradually to 67 years between 2012 and 2029.
The attraction of a company is also determined by the early retirement models on offer. There are numerous opportunities for providing this to employees.
Early retirement
As a generally rule, employees must be 55 years old before they can take early retirement. This also includes the so-called “double voluntary action.” This means that the employee makes an application and his employer must agree to the early retirement. The fact is that deductions are made from the later pension for every year that the employee retires prior to the normal retirement age. It is therefore worth calculating in advance whether other models fare better.
Semi-retirement
The legislative authorities tried to provide employees (born 1951 and later) with a smooth and early transition into retirement with the statutory regulations on semi-retirement and, at the same time, create incentives to fill the vacant positions. In practice, however, semi-retirement is also used to reduce the number of jobs.
There are two types of semi-retirement: with continuous semi-retirement (also known as the equal distribution model) the employee reduces his working hours to half of his original working hours over the entire duration of the semi-retirement.
The newer and almost exclusively used type of semi-retirement today is the block model. The semi-retirement period is subdivided into two employment phases of the same length. In the first so-called working phase the weekly working hours remain the same. In the second phase, the release phase, the employee is released from his work. There is therefore also a reduction in working hours over the entire duration.
Working life models
Long-term accounts and working life models open up attractive scope for action in terms of Human Resources: They offer employers the option of more flexible human resources planning; they offer employees more freedom in the planning of their working life.
Other elements that must be taken into account are insolvency insurance or the balancing of semi-retirement commitments, amongst others.
