Are Federal Employees Prepared to Retire?
Although federal employees continue to retire, it is increasingly evident that they are not prepared to retire. The culprit is not only an economic one, but a lack of understanding of how their benefits really work.
How can the largest workforce in the world who performs some of the most critical work in the nation, sustain themselves in retirement if they are not equipped to fully maximize their benefits.
- Also Read: 2024 Federal Employee Benefits Changes You Can’t Afford to Ignore
- Also Read: The Benefits Every Federal Employee Should Take Advantage Of—And What You Might Be Missing Out On
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Knowing that a great deal of federal employees have a lack of understanding about the basic principles of a retirement system so important to how they will live out their lives in retirement, is a frightening thought. It is, however, not a position of last resort. It is simply a call-to-action as government agencies are asked to make deeper budget cuts; training and staff development are often sacrificed to the detriment of the federal workforce.
Federal employees may be left with some knowledge gaps in fully understanding their retirement systems, but those gaps can be filled by rethinking how we educate the federal workforce about their retirement benefits. What to do? Although it seems an enormous problem for federal employees, the problem is easily cured by providing on-going training on retirement as a part of orientation, on-boarding and beyond.
Acquainting a workforce 3 to 5 years prior to retirement as to how their benefits will work in retirement accomplishes far less than what could be achieved if the engagement were started at the beginning of the employee’s career as opposed to the end.
P. S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
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