When Michelle Whiffen’s husband retired, she realized there were some things to look forward to if and when she joined him.

As she saw her husband take time to ski and golf, she thought about how she’d have time to develop her own new hobbies. Sleeping in didn’t seem bad either. And once they were both retired, she and her spouse would certainly have time to check a few travel destinations, like Scotland and Alaska, off their bucket list.

But when she thought about stopping work altogether, the feeling was more akin to dread than delight, Whiffen, SVP of client services for recruitment marketing firm HireClix, told HR Brew.

“I really enjoy my work, and I love my co-workers a ton,” she said. “And the thought, for me, of walking out the door one day, seemed like jumping off a bridge.”

To ease the transition into retirement, Whiffen is planning to take advantage of HireClix’s phased retirement program (dubbed “flextirement”), which allows employees to work fewer hours while still collecting benefits, including the company’s 401(k) match.

Just 7% of employers offered such a program in 2025, according to SHRM, but those that do see a few positive returns. Companies like HireClix see phased retirement as a way to give workers additional time to save for retirement, as well as gradually transition out of roles that have long been core to their identities. Additionally, employers told us that phased retirement programs are helpful for training the next generation of workers in their firms.

Preparing the next generation. Whiffen, who has worked for HireClix for eight years, said she hopes to start phased retirement in 2027. She plans to work 75–80% of her schedule—say, four days a week—to start, and then gradually decrease her hours until she officially retires.

Part of the appeal of “flextirement” is that it will allow Whiffen more time to train her colleagues on how to do her job. She spends her days helping customers strategize, using HireClix software to create recruitment marketing plans that in turn serve as a tool for attracting talent. When training colleagues, she tries to explain not only how she helps customers, but why she does things a certain way. The hope is that this will encourage them to think critically and solve problems on their own when they arise.

“Almost everything I do today revolves around teaching people to live without me,” said Whiffen, who has five direct reports. “I want them to thrive and not use me as a resource all the time.”

Land O’Lakes, which has had a phased retirement benefit for eight years, sees “knowledge transfer” as a key tenet of the program, CHRO Julie Sexton said. The scheme tends to work particularly well for roles “where the knowledge needs to run so deep within our supply chain organization,” she told us. Phased retirement might look like a scientist studying agricultural chemicals who partners with someone to document his work, for example, or a 50-year sales employee who works side-by-side with a newer hire.

Funny enough, one Land O’Lakes employee who took phased retirement also happened to be an expert in the company’s retirement plans, Sexton said. This employee, she said, had “legacy information” not only about Land O’Lakes’s defined benefit plan, which has since been phased out, but also its current 401(k) plan. She was also familiar with other retirement plans that were grandfathered in through organizations that Land O’Lakes acquired.

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