In her 19 years at Community Medical Center, Michele Lardieri has never stood still in her career.

Starting at the Toms River, N.J., hospital as a college student, she moved on to become a medical technician. Her career would later take her to the human-resources department and now to her latest position, divisional director at Community Health Services, a job she has had for three years.

"I have been able to grow, grow professionally through the hospital," said Lardieri, 53. Last year, she earned a master's degree in business administration in healthcare management, helped by tuition reimbursements from her employer.

"It definitely makes you more marketable for the company that you are with," she said. "The idea is to stay and grow and to have those opportunities."

It will keep her working at Community Medical Center until she is age 65, when she hopes to retire. Even then, she hopes to teach and may work part-time at the hospital.

It's a classic workplace catch-22: Baby boomers are already starting to retire, and they're soon expected to leave the workplace in droves.

But at the same time, given the switch from pension retirement plans, with corporate-guaranteed defined benefits, to more do-it-yourself retirement plans such as 401(k) plans, baby boomers may find themselves working longer than they expected to, said James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

"They have been a generation of consumers and not a generation of savers," Hughes said. "The question is, do they have the resources to retire on schedule?"

Employers are already trying to figure out how to hang on to the ones who want to leave.

"The core problem is that because of the anticipated huge increase in retirement because of the aging of the boomer population, there won't be enough workers to replace them, especially in high-skilled areas," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

"They are desperately trying to figure out a way to hold on to them."

Van Horn said employees may look for ways to keep working in some capacity that is less than full-time until the age of 65, to retain medical benefits.

Some employers are making attempts to address the needs of their workers over age 50. Besides improving productivity and morale, the measures are boosting retention rates, according to AARP.

They include steps such as offering flexible working hours, compressed work schedules, job sharing and telecommuting, the AARP said.

New Jersey healthcare companies such as Saint Barnabas Health Care System (the parent company of Community Medical Center), Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood, and Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch populate AARP's 2006 list of best employers for workers over age 50.

Saint Barnabas offers flexible work schedules, and part-time and per-diem work for its staff, said Sidney Seligman, senior vice president for human resources.

"We haven't seen mass retirements, but we have seen people eager to change the nature of their type of employment," he said.

For instance, a nurse who does physically taxing work can look for other positions that are less physically demanding, he said. Other older workers may choose to cut back on their hours.

"We try to accommodate that," Seligman said.

"Being a successful employer with people over the age of 50 ... is not so much (about) creating programs distinctly for people over the age of 50 as being a good employer for all people in general."