A Psychological Appraisal of Pre- Retirement Anxiety among Selected Workers in Lagos Metropolis

A Psychological Appraisal of Pre- Retirement Anxiety among Selected Workers in Lagos Metropolis

Statement of the Research Problem

Despite serious concerns regarding retirement and its consequences on workers overall wellness, there has been no effective retirement planning nor adequate educational programmes to prepare workers for the anticipated problems associated with retirement. There are limited policies by the government to ascertain and provide solutions to some of the psychological variables associated with retirement processes and challenges. The psychological variables include anxiety about retirement. 7 Retirement is a significant milestone in life after career progression that is characterised by either positive or negative emotions depending on the employee‘s readiness and preparedness for this new phase of life. It was reported that for about thirty percent (30%) of workers, the transition to, or actual state of retirement is stressful (Petkoska & Earl, 2009, Schaie & Scott, 2001; Bosse, Spiro, & Kressin, 1996). Retirement is a relative phenomenon as it evokes different meanings and brings forth significantly different responses from various employees. It is not a homogeneous experience for every worker; For some employees, retirement is viewed as a positive event, a period of rest after long years of work, while some employees dread to think and plan for retirement because of the negativity attached to this phase of career ladder, such as boredom, death, diminishing social and economic status (Saidu, 2007; Uchello, 1998). Thus, workers respond not only to the objective features of retirement but also to the meaning this situation has for them. In spite of the landmark development of pension reform scheme to improve the financial security of retirees, there were agitations by some workers and Unions to increase minimum wage and upward review of the retirement age. Prominent Unions in this agitation are the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) agitating for minimum wage, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) for upward review of retirement age for academic and non-academic staff. These agitations from Labour Unions suggest that Nigerian workers still exhibit substantial amount of anxiety towards retirement which will present itself in form of pre-retirement anxiety. 8 Studies have shown that anxiety about retirement is a constant companion of most employees‘ behaviour right from the day of engagement in either private or public organisations. This is because employees are usually concerned with huge decisions to make on different issues associated with life after retirement. These include but not limited to the following: source of income, time management, roles expectations and health issues. These "before retirement" decisions are often accompanied by anxiety, depression and many sleepless nights (Ode, 2004; Oniye, 2001; Ojo, 2001). However, Helman & Paladino (2004) reported that workers who are better prepared for their retirement have more positive attitudes and less anxiety than those who are not. Thus quite a number of studies focused on the educational preparation of workers for retirement with the aim of making retirement phase more meaningful (Petkoska & Earl, 2009; Oluwatula, 2005). Petkoska & Earl (2009) further revealed three domains that needed to be covered in pre-retirement planning to include financial, health and estate planning neglecting the psychological domain. Thus, little effort is directed to the assessment of pre-retirement anxiety status of workers as well as identifying the psychological factors that may be responsible for increased pre-retirement anxiety in workers. In view of this gap, there is a need to have an in-depth knowledge on the preretirement anxiety status of Nigerian workers through the development of an instrument to measure pre-retirement anxiety as well as identifying the predisposing psychological factors responsible for heightened pre-retirement anxiety. To the best of the knowledge of this researcher, there is paucity of documentation about assessment of pre-retirement anxiety and its predictive factors in the Nigerian workers. In other words there has been few studies on the identification of specific 9 psychological factors in the working years that predispose workers to more or less anxiety about retirement. It is only by identifying such factors that researchers can develop effective interventions for reducing pre-retirement anxiety. Furthermore, there is also a few standardized instrument readily available for assessing pre-retirement anxiety in Nigerian workers. Thus, this study is designed to fill the gap in knowledge about assessing pre-retirement anxiety status of Nigerian workers as well as establishing empirical support for the relationship between the variables of emotional intelligence, self -efficacy, gender, age, types of organisation and pre-retirement anxiety.

BUY THIS TOPIC ON WHATSAPP

Related Project Materials

Abstract

Obviously, it has been brought to mind that racism is one of the major issues in Black American literature and...

Background Of The Study

This is now a national issue. The increasing incidence of fraud and misappropri...

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to examine students’ awareness, accessibility and patronag...

Background Of Study

Every step in the building process involves...

ABSTRACT

The degree to which shorthand is used in offices has been of serious concern both to students and tutors in...