Seems some do and some don't. If it happens, is this a company wide policy or some kind of 'one time perk' for some individuals.
Do Swiss companies ever offer an 'early retirement package' where you stop working and they pay you a reduced salary plus benefits in 'the last few years' before state retirement age ?
This is more a German thing (Altersteilzeit).
I think you get a package here only when it's involuntary early retirement.
My company offered this deal to several employees aged over 62 during the past few years:
70% of final salary, no further bonus or fringe benefits, all corporate payments to 1st and 2nd pillar until official retirement age.
My husband’s company did this quite regularly during time he worked there up to his retirement.
Some people chose or even asked to take it others weren’t really given the choice.
It is entirely possible that it’s the same company as CH2013.
Nice!
Thanks... good to know, in theory, that this does happen. I've heard 'on the grapevine' a few times that firms are 'encouraged' by the state to offer this if the alternative is a redundancy package and a RAV placement that is highly unlikely to secure a job at plus 62.
Of course, with my luck, my firm will keep me at the data coal face until the last possible day.
I'd like to take this deal!
I'd love to know where I can get such deal. Most likely it's even worth a salary drop. Will have to seriously look around in the next decade...
I don't know what it is like now as retired at 55, a little over five years ago and just live of my savings, investments and royalties. I worked for three companies as an employee at different times and they all had an early retirement option. It was not a reduced salary, but a reduced pension over your life time plus a supplementary pension to cover the gap between retirement and the point at which the state pension kicks in.
In later life I did a lot of consulting/contracting/freelancing or whatever you want to call it and during layoffs in these places older employees were offered the option of early retirement along the lines I described above.
In all cases though, there was a permanent reduction in 2nd pillar pension entitlements.
I have seen cases of this happening, normally it is in the context of a social plan for employees who are e.g. 58-62 years old and become redundant, so they get some kind of benefits for 2 years before they can fully retire.
I think that's standard, independent of any employee. Isn't early retirement regulated by some general law? It makes sense that the pension is reduced when you start drawing pension earlier, or elevated if you postpone retirement a bit.
Thanks for the replies. Anyone over a certain age (60?) can opt for 'early retirement', that just means you opt to take your company pension as it stands at the point when you 'retire'. My question, only answered by a couple of responders, was, do you know of companies offering an early reitirement 'package' (as opposed to a 'social plan' connected to redundancy which can finish before 65)? This used to be a fairly common practise, especially for big firms with employees who'd been there a 'a while'. I was trying to guage if that's still the case. Seems to be 'not so much'.
I've also overheard stories that in the past employers in Switzerland were commonly granting vacation days increase every five years so staying with the same employer one could accumulate a lot. If I were granted 3-4 months of paid vacation per year, there would probably be no other bonus that would tempt me to change jobs.
There are plenty of companies that still do that.
not sure any public company could openly offer this as this would be against the interests of the company.
i know of some cases where people were allowed to drastically reduce their working time (say to 20%) but they had to still (at least officially) work.
I used to work for a big corporation. If you worked there for 40 years, you could take early retirement. I knew this one person who started working when they were just 16 and retired at 56. The company would keep paying for your retirement fund until the legal retirement age and also give you a little monthly salary.
A lot of my colleagues were excited about this and looking forward to enjoying it when they retire. But then, out of the blue, the company completely left Switzerland, and that messed up their retirement plans big time!
It is not necessarily against the interest of the company or the executive team:
- Immediately reduce cash outflows
- Employees go on garden leave allowing the reduced cash outflow to be booked to restructuring enabling managements profitability metrics to jump up
Typical scenario in a downsizing.
well you are paying them to do nothing.
you could instead just fire them and immediately reduce cash outflows to zero.
My old employers subsidised pillar 2 with an increased conversion rate so that from 60 you could retire with pretty well the same pension as at 65 (even allowing for the missing 5 years income/contributions). Also allowed us to build up holiday from age 50/55.
So, Phil_MCR ... why the resurrection of oldish posts about retirement?