Many retirees fantasize the ways they could best enjoy their retirement life. Imagine that you no longer need to work for the rest of your life, only thinking of where to play and eat every day. This lifestyle may be attractive to some retirees, enabling them to withdraw from full-time work and rest; however, some may become upset, feeling their personal value to the society diminishing.
Keep working to pass down experience
Many seasoned retirees are still energetic, they are skillful and have rich work experience. Their ability is definitely valuable and difficult to be quantified. Retirees may consider supporting Hong Kong’s business start-ups by joining them as freelancers so as to pass down their experience to the entrepreneurs and enhance their competitiveness. In this way, retirees could have time to enjoy life, and lead a regular life to achieve graduated retirement. Apparently, this retirement approach could create a win-win situation!
Change the mode of work to achieve graduated retirement
Ms. Wan is currently a part-time shop promoter of Hoholife, a creative elderly products retailer. She used to be a management executive of a nursing organization. After retirement, Ms. Wan is desirous to bestow her experience to contribute the society and help the needy groups. She said, ‘I very much enjoy my existing work which is to promote elderly products. Making money does not make me happy. My happiness comes from utilizing my experience and professional knowledge to help young entrepreneurs, who are enthusiastic in elderly care and bring suitable and high quality life to the elderly. I crammed my life with work in the past and am not used to a slow-paced lifestyle. I therefore choose a part-time job to achieve gradual retirement and restore my job satisfaction by helping people. It is really out of my expectation that I have learnt so many new things related to the industry such as e-commerce. I have never thought that before.’ She made a joke that unless she was fired by the employer, she will keep working for the sake of giving professional advice to the elderly helping them to achieve a dignified life.
Entering new stage of life, dare to face new challenges
Many Hong Kong people work hard and busily most of their life, focusing on work and family all the time. After retirement, some people are eager to face new challenges and choose an interesting job with flexi-hours to combine work with pleasure. “Master Archer” is a young enterprise that run new form of archery activities and team building workshops. Their recruitment plan includes employing retirees as part-time activities assistants and that attracts many retirees to apply for the vacancies. One job seeker said ‘I was an administrative staff and did not have chances to explore new stuff. I would like to try this position because this allows me to interact with others, keep connected with the social trends and develop a new skill. At the same time, this is a part-time job position, I could be more relaxed than taking up a full-time job as before.’
ARE Wisdom work matching platform
Retirement days should be enriched and colourful. This could happen if you are willing to keep in touch with the society by continuous participation.
“ARE Wisdom Social Enterprise Project” is a human resources intermediary with the mission to help retired or semi-retired persons fulfilling gradual retirement and active ageing by seeking remunerated part-time or short term jobs. At the same time, this social enterprise project enables small and medium enterprises, business start-ups, charitable organizations and social enterprises to engage stable, well-educated and experienced retirees at affordable costs.
