The Happiness Of Retirees From A Mining Industry In Namibia

ABSTRACT

Retirement from work is inevitable and it is one of the major transitions an individual goes through and this transition has significant psychosocial implications which should not be ignored. Though retirement and the experiences thereof are subjective and differ from individual to individual, it has financial, family, psychological, and social implications which affect the overall well-being or happiness of those retirees. Namibian organisations lack life skills initiatives to prepare employees for retirement and they also lack monitoring or evaluation systems to assess their happiness after retirement.

Happiness refers to the experience of a sense of joy, satisfaction, and positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile (hedonic and eudaimonic approaches). The study is based on the framework that there are three routes to happiness, namely pleasure, meaning, and engagement.

The aim of this study was to investigate the happiness of retired employees and to assess to what extent they are involved in activities that would ensure pleasure, engagement, meaning as well as life satisfaction. This study brings a psychological perspective to the concept of retirement as most of the studies mainly focused on the physical side of retirement well-being.

A mixed methods design with a sample of 30 retirees from a uranium mine was used to reach the research objectives and semi-structured interviews and two questionnaires, namely the Orientations to Happiness Scale and Satisfaction with

Life Scale (SWLS), were used as the measuring instruments. The Orientations to Happiness Scale was used to measure participants’ levels of pleasure, engagement and meaning in life while the SWLS measured their levels of satisfaction with life.

The results obtained from the empirical study showed that retirees from RUL experienced relatively high levels of life satisfaction and this was due to the presence of three components, namely pleasure meaning and engagement. The results further showed with regard to the orientation to happiness that, out of the three components, meaning was indicated as the most important component. The second most important component was engagement, followed by pleasure. This implies that for authentic happiness in retirement, one needs to have meaning in life, find something that engages you and something that gives you pleasure.

The results from the empirical study clearly showed that meaning correlates most to happiness as it was significantly and practically related to life satisfaction to a large effect (r > 0.50). In addition, the results further showed that factors that contribute to meaning are family, spirituality and being productive. All those that indicated the mentioned factors, also indicated experiencing high life satisfaction and thus being happy during their retirement. Their families and being actively involved in religious practices were the main contributors to their life having meaning and purpose.