Benchmarked Framework Towards Strengthening the Early Retirement Program for the Hotel Industry in the Philippines

After consideration of all the findings conducted for this study, the researcher recommends the following framework in order to strengthen the early retirement program for the hotel industry in the Philippines:

The brown spectrum represents an ideal best practice of the Management Initiated Early Retirement Program (MI-ERP) which offers a more liberal eligibility criteria; with very extensive support processes & continuous offering; with very generous and diverse benefits; and one which is very well managed and adequately funded.    

In implementing the best practice, the ideal logic is to reach all the four descriptive items linking to best practice to achieve the objective of accepting the early retirement plan by targeted employees.     However, it is possible that employers of the hotel industry may decide not to reach a best practice descriptive item and may resort only to commendable or industry norm descriptive item due to employees’ attitude.

On the other hand, the bright green spectrum represents a commendable MI-ERP offering moderately liberal eligibility criteria; with extensive support process & continuous offering; quite generous & diverse benefits; and one which is well managed and adequately funded.  

All the four descriptive items linked with commendable may not be the ideal practice in order to achieve acceptance of the early retirement plan by targeted employees.  However, in implementing practices linked with commendable, employers are close enough in achieving this objective of acceptance by targeted employees.  It is recommended that the hotel industry decides to upgrade their current practice.

The dark green spectrum defines the current (hotel industry) norm where the MI-ERP has limited eligibility criteria; with moderate support process & continuous offering; limited benefits; and where the retirement fund and plan is quite well managed and adequately funded. 

All the descriptive items linked with industry norm are the current practice of the hotel industry offering early retirement programs.  This means that the hotel industry has a long way to go in achieving the objective of acceptance of the early retirement program by targeted employees.  However, these should be considered as opportunities for the hotel industry to add greater value in the implementation of best practices of the early retirement program. 

Finally, the light blue spectrum represents the unpopular/poorly managed MI-ERP where the same has very limited eligibility criteria; with limited or no support process and period offering; offering basic benefits within the minimum requirements of the law; and one which is poorly managed and inadequately funded.

All the descriptive items linked with unpopular / poorly managed are based on the offering of retirement benefits as prescribed by law.  This means that employers merely rely on the mandate of Republic Act No. 7641 and Republic Act 4917 which provides for the mandated payment of retirement benefits.  There are no mechanisms in implementing practices of the MI-ERP.  There are no mechanisms for retirement fund investments, and funds are only released once an employee reaches the compulsory retirement age as prescribed by law.        

In case hotels will put up a management-initiated early retirement program (MI-ERP), the framework  will be useful in positioning correctly their Early Retirement Programs (ERPs).

Analysis of the framework  indicates a chance of higher probability of availment of targeted employees whenever a company applies a higher spectrum.   

In other words, the higher the company reaches for a particular spectrum, the higher the probability of availment by the targeted employees necessary for streamlining the organization, maintaining the high performers, and removing the low performers; the lower the spectrum, the lower the probability of availment.  

Benchmarked Framework Towards Strengthening the Early Retirement Program for the Hotel Industry in the Philippines by Carpio-Aldeguer