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 wellbeing,
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.