NIH Explores Partial Retirement as a Talent Development Tool

The NIH has a creative approach to keeping older workers who have valuable skillsets. The agency offers partial retirement as a way to keep skilled, older workers contributing to the agency mission. The agency benefits from the expertise of older workers, and the older workers get a lighter workload and are able to transfer their knowledge to younger colleagues.

Here’s how it works: the retirees cannot work more than 20 hours in a given week, and at least part of that time has to be dedicated to mentoring younger colleagues. The older workers are paid, but can still collect federal annuity benefits. NIH’s plan limits the partial retirees to no more than three additional years of service.

From the agency’s perspective, this is a win-win.

“The biggest piece is that we get to retain talent that would otherwise be leaving," says Philip Lenowitz, the agency's former deputy director of the Office of Human Resources, who is a participant in the partial retiree program.

ATD’s upcoming Government Workforce conference will address some of the issues identified by NIH’s mentoring efforts with partial retirees. At the conference, we will address best practices in mentoring and coaching in a session called “Mentoring and Coaching: What's the Difference?” We will explore what a range of agencies do in the area and how they address mentoring across the generations, virtual mentoring, and other issues related to mentoring in a modern work environment.

To learn more about the program, check out the article, "Not Ready to Retire? Not a Problem at NIH."

Read more about the ATD Government Workforce conference.