End of bonus likely caused spike in retirements at City of Calgary in 2021
CBC
Officials believe the end of the City of Calgary's retirement allowance for its employees sparked an increase in retirements last year.
In 2019, city council voted to do away with the long running retirement bonus for its employees.
As a retention incentive, the city offered a retirement payment to employees with more than 25 years of service that was equivalent to the cost of their annual vacation entitlement.
So if long time employees earned six weeks of vacation time annually, the city would pay them six weeks of salary to take with them when they retired.
The benefit dated back to the 1960s and wasn't part of any collective agreements.
Council viewed it as an anachronism, and that doing away with it could save about $4.3 million a year.
In voting to scrap the allowance, council was advised by the city solicitor to give adequate notice to employees, so it fixed Dec. 31, 2021 as the date it would be abolished.
Data from the city shows that approximately 600 employees retired in 2021, up from the normal average of about 350 annual retirements in recent years.
The city's manager of talent management, Bill Oakes, said it's thought that the end of the retirement allowance played a hand in that increase.
"We don't ask employees for the reasons for their retirement," said Oakes.
"However, we suspect that for those employees that were eligible to retire — being that they were 55 or older — and if they were planning on retiring [in 2021] or in the near future, that this would be enough of an incentive, I guess, for them to want to take advantage of having this opportunity available to them."
Oakes said it's believed 600 retirements in a single year would set an all-time record for the city.
With more than 14,000 employees, he said the increase in departures isn't expected to pose any serious problems for the city or its many services.
"We have things like succession plans in place and work on developing our employees," said Oakes.
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This First Person article is the experience of Kristine Thoreson, who lives in Calgary. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.