Federal employees can now ease their way into retirement with a new “hybrid” arrangement, which allows workers who are eligible for retirement to keep working part time – and keep earning money.
Explained by the Washington Post:
The government now can accept applications for the hybrid arrangement designed to allow retirement-eligible employees to cut back while keeping a hand in their work. Phased retirees are to work half time while collecting half of their salaries and half of the annuities they have accumulated to that point—and spending a fifth of their working time mentoring their successors.
The rules specified that phased retirement is voluntary for both the worker and the employing agency, and spelled out eligibility policies. For example, employees first must qualify for retirement under one of several combinations of age and years of service, and certain categories are excluded, such as those subject to mandatory retirement. Other guidance addressed benefits issues and how annuities will be recalculated when phased retirees later take full retirement.
But many federal workers are confused, because their employers haven’t given them any details on how and when the program begins. The Washington Post writes:
Several of the largest agencies have told their employees they will have to wait at least until sometime next year to seek phased retirement. In other agencies, employees mostly are hearing crickets.
“It’s frustrating when my own agency can’t give me a timeline of when to expect phased retirement or if it is even an option,” Alexis Slebodnick, a retirement-eligible computer forensics analyst with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Sterling, Va., said in an e-mail.
Gretchen Campbell, a retirement-eligible senior attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, said by e-mail, “Absolutely no information has been provided to employees by EPA management. . . .doesn’t sound like EPA has any plan at this point and lots of folks this was aimed at are leaving because they have no idea if or when this will ever happen at EPA.”
Agencies can choose whether or not to let their employees participate in the program.
Some agencies not participating yet are the Social Security Administration and the Defense Department.
Photo Credit: Nicolas Raymond via Flickr Creative Commons License
