Understanding the Essence of Retirement Experience of Employees in the Public Sector: A Phenomenological Research

Every person experiences retirement period in his working career. This phenomenon has physical and mental consequences. The aim of this paper is to understand pensioners’ experience of retirement in the public sector aimed to gaining deep and rich insight about this phenomenon. This is a qualitative and interpretive study that is conducted through phenomenological research strategy. The data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 13 retirees. It was analyzed through Van Mannen method (thematic analysis). Research findings include three themes, namely “nature of retirement phenomenon”, “retirement outcome” and “encounter with retirement problems”. The findings reflect public sector retiree’s experience. The results indicate that the retirement phenomenon has two subsidiary themes which are “release” and “rejection”, resulting in unpleasant situations such as “economic problems”, “reduction of social dignity”, “health problems and disablement”, and “increasing leisure”. Retirees resort to strategies such as “closer relationship with God”, “finding another job to earn a living” and “doing non-business activities” for encountering with retirement outcomes.