Bridge Employment Decision-Making Framework: A Meta-Synthesizing

Considering the increase in age, population aging, improvement in life expectancy, reduction in birth rate, economic and social conditions of society, the desire of retired employees to return to the labor market has increased and it is necessary to address the conditions and expectations of this working group in society. Employment after retirement from regular full-time employment and before complete withdrawal from income-generating activities is known as bridge employment. This research seeks to investigate the factors affecting bridge employment and also to provide a model of employment decision.

This research is of a qualitative, developmental, interpretive and inductive type with a meta-composite approach and qualitative content analysis method. The sources of information used in the research are articles published in Elsevier and Thomson Reuters Databases. After collecting the published articles from two databases based on the index considered by the researchers, the selected articles were selected for review.

After reviewing and combining the results of the selected studies reviewed, three categories of factors i.e., personal (micro level), organizational (medium level) and contextual (macro level) were recognized as effective factors on bridge employment. Each of the mentioned factors has different dimensions. These factors along with other variables such as organizational attitude, the overt and hidden functions of work, etc. construct the employment decision-making framework of the bridge.

This framework can be a basis for planning organizations in order to re-employ retirees in professional and non-professional jobs and use their experiences, knowledge, expertise, and skills. It should be noted that the prerequisite for the correct implementation of bridge employment in governmental and non-governmental organizations of the country, formulation and implementation of human resource policies and strategies are appropriate to it.