At age 66, Clayton Brown recently found himself on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in Alaska, but he wasn't there for the shuffleboard.

Brown, a longtime railroad executive, is proud of helping build a safety program for Amtrak in the 1980s. Soon after Brown retired seven years ago, DuPont, the company that advised Amtrak on safety, asked him if he wanted to serve as a safety consultant.

And so he's traveled the world as a member of DuPont's consulting team, working on contract. For Royal Caribbean, he trained employees on safety matters. He'll take another working cruise next month. In Madrid, after the 2004 bombings, he assessed the emergency response procedures for the national railway of Spain. And he helped secure a large steel company in India.

"I wasn't ready to kick back," Brown said. "It's a wonderful way to spend retirement, using your skills you brought to the table from your business life."

As baby boomers reach traditional retirement age, businesses should consider the value of finding continued roles for them, said Lisa Wolfe, communications director for AARP Delaware.

As the workforce ages, the prospect of large-scale retirements should have businesses planning ahead, she said. But few do, according to the results of a new AARP Delaware study.

In 2000, 13 percent of the national work force was 55 and older. By 2012, this figure is expected to rise to almost 20 percent, the organization reported.

As the baby boomer population begins to retire, companies will have more jobs than workers, Delaware AARP Director Lucretia Young said.

In a telephone survey of 400 Delaware employers late last year, AARP found that more than three in five believed their business is likely to face a shortage of qualified workers in the next five years, but only one in four are taking steps to deal with it.

Just 12 percent of businesses surveyed said they were offering incentives to encourage their employees to delay retirement.

"The reality is, given what's happened with the demographic, employers aren't really going to have a choice. There aren't as many younger workers coming into the ranks as those preparing for retirement," Wolfe said.

You can prepare your business in various ways for the graying of the workforce, said Kathy Hyde, eldercare services director of Family & Workplace Connection, a nonprofit organization in Wilmington, Del., that helps people find care for their children and parents.

Older workers value flexibility, whether that means working fewer hours, job sharing or telecommuting, she said.

Eldercare programs are a valuable benefit, she said. The programs help these older employees deal with their elderly parents. These programs sometimes pay for the cost of home health services, emergency care, or help finding doctors or nursing homes.

Some companies even allow workers to put their parents on their health insurance plans.

Many older workers also are dealing with their own children, who are perhaps coming home from college, she said.

"It's a pretty heavy juggling thing," Hyde said.

Despite medical advancements that allow people to live healthier, longer lives, some institutional hurdles may keep workers from staying longer, Hyde said. Medicare and Social Security rules give employees an incentive to retire rather than keep working, she said. And company pension rules sometimes encourage employees to retire rather than work that extra year.

"We need to find some way to keep them interested in sticking around," Hyde said.

Kate Bridges, senior research adviser for AARP, said that despite trying to plan ahead, many people can't afford to retire, even if they wanted to. Large businesses have the resources to deal with the oncoming rush of retirements, but small businesses might overlook it in the bustle of daily life, she said.