16 Well Beyond Transition to Retirement Systems Framework Well Beyond Transition to Retirement Systems Framework 17 ACTION ACTIVITIES RATIONALE RESOURCES 10 Make available and promote EAP access post-service. Communicate the availability of other forms of clinical support available outside the agency that understand the issues and challenges of emergency service work. Ensure ongoing access to EAP for employees and their families 24 months post-service and promote this service via wellbeing checks and retirement processes. The year after retirement is a high- risk period for wellbeing challenges, including depression and marital instability. Ensuring that employees have ongoing access to agency EAP support after leaving can help alleviate mental decline. In addition to your EAP, Fortem and Responder Assist offer clinical services from providers that understand the challenges of emergency service work. 11 Establish a network for former workers. Facilitate social connection by creating support through a former workers network, which could be an alumni association, a retired peer program or other vehicle. Connect people leaving the agency to others at the same stage to promote a community of transitioning workers. Former worker/volunteer organisational groups can help reduce feelings of isolation for employees after retirement by providing ongoing support and connection. They can support employees to retain aspects of their old (agency-based) identity as they construct a new post-work identity and serve as a point of contact for agencies wanting to invited retirees to be involved in new programs or agency activities. Examples of such entities include: • Ambulance Victoria’s RAFE (Retired and Former Employee Peer Support Program) • The Police Veterans • Retired and Former Police Association of New South Wales • NSW Police Legacy • Friends of Firefighters (USA) 12 Create an agency specific transition to retirement resource. Develop a comprehensive information pack for employees and their partner/support network. Providing information about retirement issues, planning tools, and services/supports available. Improves awareness and understanding of normal experiences, and how to promote healthy transition. Demystifies retirement as an unknown stage of life. Ambulance Victoria has a good example of an agency transition Brochure. For an example of transition brochure for the sector is found here, for the Australian Defence Force 13 Develop fitness for work policy and management guides. Develop a fitness for work policy and guide for managers that helps avoid discrimination. Employees seeking to transition for medical reasons require ongoing connection and support from the agency. By providing a policy and guidance on the management of employees with injuries and illnesses, employees are more likely to return to work. Ageing Workforce Ready have developed a template for creating a fitness for work policy. They have also developed a manager guide to support the implementation of a fitness for work policy, and a change management brochure to support the development of a new policy, how do consultation, get buy in etc. ACTION ACTIVITIES RATIONALE RESOURCES 8 Utilise retired employees for agency-based work and initiatives, including initiatives that support transitions to retirement. Create opportunities for and invite former workers as volunteers to participate in agency activities such as: • peer support • mentoring • contributing lived experience to program design • casual work on complex projects that benefit from extensive agency experience • transition to retirement coaching • special events Linking former workers to agency activities: • Communicates the organisation continues to care for employees beyond service • Promotes social connection • Captures and utilises legacy for organisational knowledge and other benefits. Mentoring has the benefits of: • Preventing rupture in relation to agency identity and collegiality • Providing a sense of selfworth, legacy, purpose and meaning from passing on accumulated skills, operational insights, and organisational knowledge • Retaining sense of purpose and usefulness to their former agency. ESF’s ‘Well Beyond’ Transition to Retirement peer coaching program 9 Invite retired employees to be lived experience speakers. Invite employees to be part of ESF’s lived experience library to provide opportunities for retired workers and volunteers to speak about their retirement journeys at presentations, seminars, and other events. Lived experience speakers can present to different audiences and for different purposes. For example: • As exemplars for messages the agency is trying to promote (flexible work, career as having an end point) • Normalising retirement to audiences that are approaching retirement to explain services and advocate participation in agency activities • Modelling best practice where where employees have received organisational support to transition for a well-adjusted retirement • Destigmatising mental and physical health check-ins by emphasising the value of ending a career with good understanding of personal physical and mental fitness. Leveraging the lived experience of former workers has the following benefits: • Supports a sense of meaning and purpose for the speaker • Promote understanding of retirement challenges and issues • Promote strategies for healthy transitions including the potential to promote the positive impacts of flexible work and job crafting for retirement adjustment • Creates a network of lived experience ambassadors to provide input to programs, services, and system design. Keep your eye on developments for: ESF’s Lived Experience Network Examples of organisations who have lived experience ambassadors or mentors: • Sane’s peer ambassadors • Suicide Prevention Australia’s Lived Experience Network (LEN) • Roses in the Ocean Lived Experience Collective • Beyond Blue’s speaker’s bureau and podcast series.
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