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In a study of 108 companies, Charles D. Spencer & Associates, a Chicago-based research firm, found that 27% were offering special incentives for early retirement. Among the corporations that have started such programs in the past two years: Polaroid, Deere and Xerox. A recent addition to the list is R.J. Reynolds, the largest U.S. tobacco company. In January, Reynolds offered pension benefits and a bonus of a year's salary to workers in its headquarters town of Winston-Salem, N.C., who by next year will be 55 or older and will have worked at least ten years for the company. Reynolds is concerned that its sales may drop because Congress doubled the federal excise tax on cigarettes to 16¢, effective last month.
A big drawback to offering resignation or early-retirement bonuses is that the company cannot control which workers choose to leave. Talented employees may go because they feel certain of finding other jobs, while deadwood workers, with no other employment options, may hang on. Polaroid, for example, suffered an unintended loss last May from its early-retirement plan. Richard Young, 56, who was Polaroid's $210,000-a-year director of worldwide marketing, "retired" with a hefty pension and later became president of Houghton Mifflin, the book publishers, at a slightly lower salary.
Nonetheless, Polaroid insists that it has few regrets. Says a spokesman: "We may have lost some good people, but we eliminated the need for a major layoff." More and more managers seem to agree that it is easier to let employees jump through open windows than to try shoving them out the door.