Hong Kong eyes golden opportunities for retirees

Sharing skills

With an increasing number of well-educated seniors retiring, Lam also suggested greater utilization of retirees' skills in the workforce.

Many of them are financially secure, but may be willing to work for half or a quarter of a full-time salary, in exchange for a meaningful role in an organization's operations.

This way, the organization doesn't need to commit to a costly full-time job to get professional services, he noted.

Such a model has been adopted overseas.

Terry Lum, a professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong, said the United States government provides a platform that matches retirees' skills with small organizations that can't afford to hire full-time employees for certain jobs, such as specialized accounting or bookkeeping.

These organizations' need for such services might only arise once or twice, which makes the platform an ideal solution for both retirees and the organizations, he said.

Lum, who is also a member of the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Policy Unit Expert Group, suggested that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, or an organization like the Hong Kong Jockey Club, could take the lead in establishing a similar platform.

Project GrandMove, a program that trains retirees to become exercise instructors for the elderly, is one of the new choices open to volunteers.

Lum, who heads the project, said that apart from the chairman of the board, all the board members are volunteers. Meetings are convened, and board members are fully involved in the decision-making process.

So far, the project has trained about 230 volunteer coaches, with 80 percent of them aged over 60. A total of 1,964 elderly people have participated in the exercise program.

Many of the volunteers are retired civil servants and college teachers. "These retirees are in pursuit of self-improvement through their volunteer work," Lum said.