Patience Needed on Phased Retirement

Many federal employees are asking how to go about applying for the new phased retirement arrangement; the answer is that they can’t, at least not yet. The rules that OPM put out in June are proposed only, and there is a comment period until August 5. At the end, OPM technically could put out final rules almost immediately, but how fast it will do so as a practical matter depends on how long OPM takes to work through the comments and whether it will change the rules to address issues raised in them. It’s unclear whether individual agencies would put out implementing guidance of their own afterward and if so how long that would take. In the meantime, employees can review the proposed policies—which likely will not change substantially because the underlying law generally laid out the requirements—and consider how they could make the case to agency management that phased retirement would be a win-win situation in their case.