Managing flexible retirement and extended working lives

Working with the Oxford Brookes University Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice to help higher education institutions (HEIs) extend the working lives of their staff and manage without a default retirement age. 

The default retirement age (DRA) of 65 was removed in October 2011, with retirements affected by the transitional arrangements needing to be completed by November 2012. This project sought to help HEIs meet the demands of an environment where forced retirement is not possible.

Led by Oxford Brookes, with support from ECU, the project advisory group included representatives from trade unions, Universities Human Resources, the Leadership Foundation and the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.

Project outputs

The project outputs included:

• A guide including a range of information and resources to help HEIs develop their own best practice to support flexible retirement and extend working lives. The content was developed to respond to issues identified in a survey conducted as part of the project in November 2010. 
• A report on the 2010 survey findings, along with information on retirement expectations research conducted by Oxford Brookes in 2008.
• Regional workshops to explore the implication for the management of human resources of extending working lives, including the use of employer-justified retirement ages.
• In-depth case studies on the workability approach to managing an ageing workforce. 

Resources

This collaborative project, which also received funding from HEFCE, built on a previous project undertaken on age diversity by Oxford Brookes, which ECU was also involved in. Further details on the projects: Managing flexible retirement and extending working lives