Work Life Retirement
Coming retirement wave brings massive loss of expertise
By Jason Walsh
baby boomer generation will retire—per day. Remember the patronizing phrase, “OK, boomer”? Get ready for “No way, boomer”—please don’t retire without training your replacements! Much of the important information lost is known as “process knowledge”—what’s been learned over the years by senior employees based on their own trial-and- error successes and mistakes. It’s about efficiency, workflow and reliability—how to get things done. Exacerbating the problem is that, unlike in past generations, there are fewer junior employees ready to rise up and replace them, since many of their ranks have been replaced by AI. And, further, of those junior employees chomping at the bit to take on senior- level roles, six in 10 say they aren’t
receiving the on-the-job training they need to improve their skills, according to a 2024 survey by business-consulting firm Gartner. And how will brain-drain-beleaguered companies address the problem of technology replacing their next-level employees? More technology, of course. “To address this urgent threat, organizations will need to build their collective intelligence, using technology to ensure that knowledge can easily flow between experts who have skills and novice employees who need skills,” HBR says. Note to AI-obsessed companies: Whether there will be any expert or novice employees left in a few years, will be key.
Companies take heed: The brain drain is about to begin. That’s the term business leaders are using to describe the massive loss of institutional knowledge companies are on the cusp of suffering as the workforce’s most experienced employees begin retiring at an accelerated rate. “A larger proportion of the workforce will reach retirement age in 2025 than in any previous year on record,” reported the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in January. And that proportion will continue to grow in the years to come. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1990 about 12% of the U.S. workforce was 55 or older. By 2023, that percentage had doubled. Over the next five years, according to Nasdaq.com’s personal finance unit Go Banking Rates, an estimated 10,000 members of the
Exodus Rex! Here are 3 ways organizations can mitigate a brain drain when the ‘silver tsunami’ of retirements occurs, according to jobsite Welcome to the Jungle: n Create a culture of knowledge sharing: Encourage and reward the sharing of expertise; company leadership must lead by example n Involve senior workers in training programs and knowledge documentation: Mentorship programs with targeted successors in keys roles; don’t wait on this, start early n Tap alumni and former employees: Many retired employees are happy to share their hard-earned knowledge; keep them on hand as contract consultants
April 2025
NorthBaybiz 17
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