Source: Inter Press Service (IPS), Terra Viva UN Journal, Tuesday, May 31 2005, Volume 13-98
Letter to the Editor
U.N. Retirees: Past Masters
With reference to last week’s articles on UN retirees, it is sad to see retirees go and take with them a wealth of experience. Interim management has arrived as a new resourcing technique. It would be good to see the United Nations have a roster of retirees who can serve in interim management to fill the gaps of overworked staff or special projects. These grey-haired people have tremendous experience that can benefit the organization for a term of years. An interim should not be there to advise management on its options, but to take action, make decisions and change things and left out of the day-to-day politics and bureaucracy. The interim should not be a full-time staff member and as such will have no ambition to become one. They should instead have a well-defined task, with outputs of what constitutes a successful outcome.
The UN and its agencies do use retirees on some assignments. However, such assignments are granted on knowwho rather than on a systematic way of harnessing the use of retirees. It may be a good idea to have an Interim Management program to utilize retirees well in their early retirement years, based on know-how across all UN agencies. It would be important to remember that retirees may not pair off as consultants. This would only put the poor souls under undue pressure and expect just too much. To distinguish the difference: consultants bring a wide range of skills to organizational problems and help to implement world-class solutions, while retiree interims can manage UN business very well. What consultants cannot do is run the business of the UN organization.
UN retirees have a wealth of experience and can bring with them significant problem-solving skills coupled with a results-driven approach. These people can fill an existing gap in the organization or assume a position for a limited time for a special project. Retirees can bring many benefits to the organization. The clearest benefit is solving immediate problems with the minimum of disruption. Many headquarters sections or field offices are unable to move quickly when they do not have staff available to take on more work. Hiring an interim retiree can allow such offices to improve response times when opportunity arises.
Quite often, the UN and its agencies find ways of sending off staff in their early retirement years with pay packages to early retirement or full term retirement. There are various reasons for such discord which are too various to be mentioned. However, by having a scheme of Interim Management, retirees get the option of taking early retirement with the other option of being reemployed for short-term positions as Interims to gradually phase them into retirement. Such a scheme would be a win/win situation for both the organization and the staff member. Retirees are often overqualified for the job. Some have operated at director level, section chief or senior general service positions. This means that the UN and its allied agencies can acquire higher-level skills and experience than are currently available. In the business sector, interim management is here to stay. For UN organizations, it offers the breathing space it needs for overworked staff. For prospective retirees and young retirees it offers a new and exciting career direction. These grey haired people have had exposure to a wider variety and greater richness of values than those say two-thirds or half their age. Diverse experiences of heterogeneous work make retirees a valuable asset over a number of younger strangers who recruit to short-term positions knowing very little about the work of the United Nations and its allied agencies.
Merrill Cassell a Retiree and former Budget Director of UNICEF
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