Retirement Perception and its Challenges Among Government Employees. The Case of Public Service Commission

Abstract

The research focused on establishing the retirement perception and its challenges to the government employees, particularly Public Service Commission employees. The statutory retirement age for the members who joined the Public Service Commission before 1 May 1992 is 65 years and 60 years to anyone who joined on or after 1 May 1992 according to the Statutory Instrument 1 of 2000. The main problem that has triggered the research on this topic is that the majority of the government employees are not retiring despite reaching retirement age. Furthermore, employees are not retiring because they have not saved enough for their retirement and that they have not secured personal accommodation, some still have school fees to be paid for their children, some have medical responsibilities for their parents as well as extended families and the pension money is not enough to cover all their financial responsibilities. The research was influenced by Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, Continuity Theory, Role theory and Resources Perspective Theory. The population under study is the Public Service Commission which has an establishment of 1240 employees and consists of 14 departments. The research used a sample of 90 employees (7% of population) who represented the organisation. The researcher did not consider all the employees thus the researcher employed the stratified and simple random sampling to ensure that every department and every level is represented. Purposive sampling was also used to select members who are already on extension of service to enable the researcher to generalize findings from people knowledgeable of the subject. The study used a mixed method research design in which the research combined both qualitative and quantitative research. The rationale behind a mixed research method is that quantitative results provide a general picture of the problem whereas the qualitative results refine, explain or extend the general picture. The questionnaires and interviews were used as data collection instruments and the data was analysed using content analysis, graphs and frequency tables which were derived from SPSS. According to the research, Public Service Commission employees are not prepared for retirement as they have not saved for their retirement. The research has revealed that the reason for members not retiring is that the employees perceive retirement as a time of financial struggle and time of boredom. The research also revealed that having members serving beyond retirement is costly to the government because the aged workforce if associated with absenteeism which affects service delivery. In order to change the employees’ perception towards retirement and to encourage them to go on retirement, the study suggested that the organisation should improve employees’ salaries and benefits. This enables employees to have enough money for daily usage, saving and investing in assets. This encourages them retire when they are due because they would be prepared for their retirement. The government should release pension benefits immediately after an employee retires as well as offering retirement counselling and awareness programmes to its employees from the time one joins the organisation in order to adequately prepare them psychologically for retirement.