Few if any studies examine the current scene, but attorneys at some large law firms representing employers say they began seeing a renewed client interest in these packages late last fall. Compassion aside, it's easy to understand why employers choose this route. Voluntary exits are less traumatic than layoffs for both a company and its surviving employees. Not to mention that employees who depart willingly are less prone to litigate than those who are fired, says Carole O'Blenes, a partner in the New York office of Proskauer. Although the offers vary widely from company to company, a typical package pushes early retirees closer to full-retirement benefits by giving them two to five years of added age and service credit.
Companies sometimes throw other goodies into the package, especially ones related to their business.
There are some differences between early-retirement packages of today and those of 15 or so years ago, when they first became a staple of daily business news. Some packages today, for example, contain provisions for early vesting of stock options, those compensation darlings of the late 1990s, says O'Blenes. Human resources managers are also being more selective about who gets offered a deal, for fear that too many employees, especially those with talents in short supply, will bolt. That's a lesson DuPont Co. learned in 1985, when 12,000 employees, double the target, snatched an early-retirement incentive. Companies also have learned to deal with grumbling from those miffed because they weren't invited to the party.