By John Gillie
Just because you're retired, don't think your job possibilities are limited to McDonald's server and Wal-Mart greeter positions.
Tom Butine is living proof that challenging and rewarding jobs are available for retired workers with skills and talent.
The Boeing Phantom Works engineer retired last year at 55. Now he works pretty much when he wants, where he wants and how long he wants. If he wants to spend a few months sailing, he simply lets his employer know he'll be away. And he almost never commutes to the office, working instead with a company-furnished computer system from his condominium.
And Butine's flexible work style doesn't come with any financial sacrifice. He's making more now than when he was a regular Boeing employee, and he enjoys handsome benefits.
And perhaps best of all, Butine didn't have to adjust to a new job after retirement. He's doing much of the same work for Boeing he did before he retired after 30 years as a Boeing engineer.
Butine doesn't work directly for Boeing, but instead for an Indianapolis company called YourEncore Inc. which contracts with Boeing to provide Butine's services. YourEncore works with major corporations nationwide to provide skilled retired professionals for full or part-time work.
Boeing's partnership with YourEncore is beneficial to everyone involved, said Boeing. The company is able to retain the services of talented and knowledgeable employees after their normal retirement, and the retirees get flexible work schedules that were impossible as a regular Boeing worker.
"People with critical, specific skills are difficult to find," said Brad Lawson, YourEncore's president. "They may already be employed or aren't available for short-term projects like a retiree might."
In Butine's case, he was working on a sophisticated and complex project to design a software system to integrate all the elements of preproduction planning for major aerospace projects.
His bosses begged him to stay, but Butine and his wife Diane had been planning for his retirement for years. They had even taken a two-year leave of absence seven years before to sail around the South Pacific. That retirement dress rehearsal convinced Butine of the wisdom of retiring young enough to enjoy the worldwide sailing they had long planned.
But when his Boeing bosses approached him about joining the YourEncore program, Butine was attracted to benefits it provided. It would keep him active in a field he enjoyed, it would supplement his retirement income and it would allow him to play when he wanted to play and work when he wanted to work.
After the mandatory 3-month post-retirement hiatus Boeing requires of retired workers, Butine began working on his Boeing projects again in October. During several of the winter months, he worked 40 hours a week on those projects, but from his home, not from his Boeing office.
But now that summer is coming, Butine said he intends to cut back. There may be several weeks, he said, when he won't work at all. And in 2007 he and his wife intend to begin a lengthy sailing trip down the West Coast and ultimately into the Caribbean.
"It's gone much more smoothly than I had imagined was possible," he said. "I plan to continue working as both my needs and Boeing's coincide."
The YourEncore works well for Boeing, too. It helps the company match the hills and valleys of demand with available and knowledgeable labor without having to hire full-time staff, said Bill Bozich, another YourEncore engineer, told Boeing's Frontiers employee magazine.
Many older workers won't be as fortunate in finding productive work after retiring from the lifelong occupations as was Butine, say employment experts. But an impending labor shortage because of baby boomers leaving the work force is creating new opportunities for retirees seeking new work.
The key to finding rewarding work is having the skills employers need.
"With the shortage of workers in the current labor market, employers are more willing to hire people of any age if they have the skills that the employer can use," said J. Michael Farr, co-author of "Best Jobs for the 21st Century."
Retirees with well-honed skills, of course, can look in the same field in which they worked all their lives. Or retirement can be an opportunity to enter a new occupation in which the retirees' talents can be applied to a new job.
Retired persons with extensive experience in their fields, for instance, could share those real-world skills with younger people by teaching part-time or full-time in a vocational school or community college.
Other retirees could take advantage of their free time to learn an entirely new skill, going back to school to learn the tools of the trade for a profession that had always attracted them.
And for some retirees, the security of retirement income gives them the freedom to become an entrepreneur, opening a bed and breakfast, a consulting firm or a manufacturing or distribution business.
John Gillie can be reached at 253-597-8663 or john.gillie@thenewstribune.com.
Source: The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. Powered by Yellowbrix.
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