An ambivalent imagination: freedom and isolation rub shoulders
When questioning the French about what the end of career represents for them, the answers reveal a strong polarity.
On the one hand, 53 % see it as an opportunity to find time for yourself, 43 % envisage it as a new start, 31 % speak of freedom found. This positive vision seems to dominate … but barely.
Because on the other side, 38 % of respondents describe a negative situation : isolation, loss of benchmarks, drop in intellectual stimulation. And above all, 13 % denounce a lack of support by companies, highlighting a persistent blindness of HR policies.
A physical and emotional feeling that escapes HR standards
When we dig the individual feeling, the polarity increases. 36 % of French people mention relief, 31 % a feeling of accomplishment, 28 % fatigue. But 22 % express concern, 10 % of frustration, 9 % of sadness.
This mixture reveals a truth rarely integrated into organizational patterns: The end of career is not a neutral momentneither physiologically nor symbolically.
The decisive factor: preserve health more than income
To the question “What is a successful end of career?” », The answer is final: 69 % of those questioned cite physical and mental health. The financial situation then arrives (53 %), before professional recognition or transmission.
This hierarchy reflects a reality that is not very discussed in managerial circles: The first lever for assumed professional aging is not money, but health.
A massive desire for accompaniment, rarely honored
The study establishes a striking gap between the expectations expressed and the devices really proposed.
In non -retired assets, 60 % would like to benefit from human support To prepare their release. 55 % would like to be able to test a new activity, 54 % hope for financial support, 49 % require suitable training.
But when we question the retirees: barely 28 to 38 % say they had access to one of these supporters. The lack of structured devices, low personalization, and often too late temporality are all brakes to a fluid transition.
Continue to work: yes, but otherwise
The idea that retirement is an end point no longer holds. 68 % of assets and 67 % of retirees declare that they would like to continue working after retirement, provided that it is in a chosen activity.
It is therefore not the end of the work that is expected, but The end of the forced work.
An absence of persistent recognition
79 % of French people believe that experienced workers are not sufficiently valued. This figure is stable, year after year. It reflects a form of systemic dissonance: speeches praise experience, but practices marginalize it.
And yet, 75 % of respondents consider positively the idea that senior colleague reduces his working time to carry out a personal projectincluding 23 % as an inspiring solution.
Towards a new end -of -career engineering
OpinionWay study data sketch an operational roadmap. What the French want is:
- Human supportnot just administrative
- Progressive and chosen methods of exit
- From bridges to other forms of professional contribution (mentoring, advice, associative commitment)
- An HR system capable of anticipating, modulating, individualizing
Clearly, moving from a threshold logic (legal age) to a adapted trajectory logiccapable of articulating health, desire, and recognition.
Is the system ready? Not yet.
The French are already in this dynamic: They aspire to end their standing career, active, free to choose their transition modality.
But the company, in its current structuring, often remains out of step: little equipped to individualize, poorly trained to anticipate, too attached to linear career standards.
It is not a reform that must be imagined, but A complete paradigm change.
