Factors Influencing Bridge Employment Engagement: With Reference on Health Sector in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Purpose: Ageing population will eventually have a dramatic effect on the country’s economy, as it influences on the size of the labor force available. Indorsing longer working lives by encouraging retirees back to the work force has been encouraged by many as a viable option to combat this issue and one way to do this is through bridge employment. Bridge employment is paid work undertaken after retirement from the main vocation but before leaving the labor force completely. The aim of this study is to identify factors influencing bridge employment in health sector in Sri Lanka.
 Design: Comparing developed and developing context literatures, the study focused on how job-related factors (financial motives and organizational environment) and the societal-level factors (personal fulfillment and social relationship) affect to the bridge employment. Quantitative approach was used. Primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey. To fulfill the study aim, 296 employees representing doctors and nurses, were taken as the sample of this study. 
 Findings: The binary logistic regression analysis results indicated that 21.9 per cent variation of the bridge employment can be explained by organizational environment, financial motives, social relationship and personal fulfillment. Among the factors, personal fulfillment, social relationship and organizational environment were significant determinants of bridge employment in health sector in Sri Lanka. Financial motive was not a significant predictor on bridge employment engagement.
 Research Implications: The study findings can aid to healthcare centers and pharmaceutical industry as great opportunity in gaining expertise knowledge of bridge employees by understanding influences of personal fulfillment, social relationship and organizational environment factors on their expectations. Further, the findings will be useful to local and global human resources specialists to access and evaluate the research findings to develop new HRM practices based on bride employment.
 Limitations: The responsiveness of older employees to providing data, is below than the expected responsiveness.