SENIORITY comes with age! Time was when executives were principally grey-haired and ageing. Modern organisations have finally spelled the death of this age-old myth, yet key positions have more than a smattering of aged employees.
While companies contentedly bask in the glory of their experienced senior personnel, what they fail to notice is that most of them are slowly inching towards retirement.
In fact, corporate researchers predict that by 2010, more than one-fifth of the executives, managers and workers will exit the workforce for good. What are we bemoaning? As seasoned experts bow out in unprecedented numbers, years of invaluable experience and tacit knowledge will walk out of the door too!
Since 80 per cent of crucial institutional know-how lies in the heads of its people, the loss will spell total chaos in its wake. Rightly, when a major automobile and aircraft engine manufacturer was faced with the impending retirement of a veteran systems engineer, managers calculated that the engineer's retirement would cost the company USD 400,000 in the first year itself.
The daunting skills shortage will acquire nightmarish proportions and organisations will struggle just to maintain their capabilities. With the mass exodus, companies will be left with no option but to begin afresh.
As David DeLong, author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, highlights, "Mature companies will be hit by a double whammy - difficulty in retaining aging workers, and possible shortages of workers in certain key job categories and skill sets".
However, an IBM survey reveals that barely 30 per cent of companies have studied their workforce to identify and plug the potential knowledge vulnerabilities. Companies have to quickly harness their knowledge before it's lost forever. Here's how they can continue to grow:
Revamp: Companies must adjust their corporate business strategy to reduce the importance of the positions and skills of retiring workers. They could evolve new and better ways of working. However, this may not always be feasible. In the process their key competencies like problem solving and innovation may totally disappear.
Buying time: Management should try to entice older workers to remain by altering the work culture and make jobs more interesting. Financial and non-financial incentives can also lure them to stay. Companies can offer potential retirees alternative work options like flexitime, part-time, telecommuting or phased retirement. The working environment can be made elder-friendly to overcome age-related physical limitations.
A step ahead: Companies can implement programmes where skilled retirees collaborate with existing employees - online or in-person-to solve problems, counsel and share expertise. Retirees' knowledge can be utilised by encouraging them to work as contractors or consultants or conduct seminars and workshops for new staff.
Succession planning: Making skilled personnel stay is however a stopgap arrangement. How long can people hang around for the company's good? Instead of allowing the eventuality to hit them, companies should groom the next generation to take over the mantle well in advance.
1. They should train and develop a pool that is primed to move up whenever the need arises.
2. Executive mentoring facilitates the transfer of knowledge, practical experience and know-how of grassroots from senior executives to mid-level managers.
3. Shadowing seniors will also give insights into the nuances of management style, strategic planning, and leadership besides enabling them to move into challenging positions with ease. Progressive companies are creating knowledge networks like `communities of practice' (COP) or `action-learning teams', which team people together from various disciplines and echelons to tap and transfer valuable learning.
Knowledge repositories: Cataloguing key information for reference can help cushion the blow of retirements. Knowledge management calls for identifying crucial knowledge and areas where they may lose workers with such knowledge.
Data collection tools like business process documentation and other software can safeguard employee learning well before they retire. A central knowledge base with common search tools will help disseminate the same to young employees.
So, unless you are ready to lose what it's taken your employees a lifetime to learn, seriously prepare for the knowledge drain ahead!
While companies contentedly bask in the glory of their experienced senior personnel, what they fail to notice is that most of them are slowly inching towards retirement.
In fact, corporate researchers predict that by 2010, more than one-fifth of the executives, managers and workers will exit the workforce for good. What are we bemoaning? As seasoned experts bow out in unprecedented numbers, years of invaluable experience and tacit knowledge will walk out of the door too!
Since 80 per cent of crucial institutional know-how lies in the heads of its people, the loss will spell total chaos in its wake. Rightly, when a major automobile and aircraft engine manufacturer was faced with the impending retirement of a veteran systems engineer, managers calculated that the engineer's retirement would cost the company USD 400,000 in the first year itself.
The daunting skills shortage will acquire nightmarish proportions and organisations will struggle just to maintain their capabilities. With the mass exodus, companies will be left with no option but to begin afresh.
As David DeLong, author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, highlights, "Mature companies will be hit by a double whammy - difficulty in retaining aging workers, and possible shortages of workers in certain key job categories and skill sets".
However, an IBM survey reveals that barely 30 per cent of companies have studied their workforce to identify and plug the potential knowledge vulnerabilities. Companies have to quickly harness their knowledge before it's lost forever. Here's how they can continue to grow:
Revamp: Companies must adjust their corporate business strategy to reduce the importance of the positions and skills of retiring workers. They could evolve new and better ways of working. However, this may not always be feasible. In the process their key competencies like problem solving and innovation may totally disappear.
Buying time: Management should try to entice older workers to remain by altering the work culture and make jobs more interesting. Financial and non-financial incentives can also lure them to stay. Companies can offer potential retirees alternative work options like flexitime, part-time, telecommuting or phased retirement. The working environment can be made elder-friendly to overcome age-related physical limitations.
A step ahead: Companies can implement programmes where skilled retirees collaborate with existing employees - online or in-person-to solve problems, counsel and share expertise. Retirees' knowledge can be utilised by encouraging them to work as contractors or consultants or conduct seminars and workshops for new staff.
Succession planning: Making skilled personnel stay is however a stopgap arrangement. How long can people hang around for the company's good? Instead of allowing the eventuality to hit them, companies should groom the next generation to take over the mantle well in advance.
1. They should train and develop a pool that is primed to move up whenever the need arises.
2. Executive mentoring facilitates the transfer of knowledge, practical experience and know-how of grassroots from senior executives to mid-level managers.
3. Shadowing seniors will also give insights into the nuances of management style, strategic planning, and leadership besides enabling them to move into challenging positions with ease. Progressive companies are creating knowledge networks like `communities of practice' (COP) or `action-learning teams', which team people together from various disciplines and echelons to tap and transfer valuable learning.
Knowledge repositories: Cataloguing key information for reference can help cushion the blow of retirements. Knowledge management calls for identifying crucial knowledge and areas where they may lose workers with such knowledge.
Data collection tools like business process documentation and other software can safeguard employee learning well before they retire. A central knowledge base with common search tools will help disseminate the same to young employees.
So, unless you are ready to lose what it's taken your employees a lifetime to learn, seriously prepare for the knowledge drain ahead!
PAYAL CHANANIA
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