Capitalizing on the Baby Boomer Brain Drain

You are probably well aware of the coming exodus of Baby Boomers from the workforce. You may have even heard that the first official Baby Boomer – Kathleen Casey-Kirschling – recently filed for social security benefits with the Social Security Administration, further underscoring the fast approaching departure of millions of highly trained and experienced workers from the workforce.

Does this mean that all the Baby Boomers in your organization will be retiring tomorrow or in the coming months? Of course not, but eventually they will and it is in your best interest to have an action plan in place for retaining the knowledge and expertise that they have gained in their years of loyal employment with your organization.

Have An Action Plan Ready
There are a number of approaches you may take to retain your team members’ knowledge and expertise before they retire. Some are more attractive to pending retirees than others. Remember…nobody wants to write a job manual in their final months before retirement!

The following are five methods for retaining organizational knowledge and expertise that I have found to be effective:

1. Design and implement a mentoring program – Mentoring can be an incredibly effective way to pass knowledge on from one generation to the next. As those soon to retire have likely been with your organization for some time, you should have a good idea who would be interested on taking on a younger protégé. Approach these individuals and suggest several high potential team members that they might have in interest in sharing their knowledge and expertise with before they retire.
    
2. Offer part time work – For many the promise of retirement isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The sudden abundance of free time on one’s hand can be difficult to handle for some and many end up returning to the workforce part-time. Why let them take their knowledge and skills elsewhere? Let your Baby Boomers poised to retire know that you are willing to offer part time work (perhaps half days or shortened weeks) to ease the transition into retirement if they are interested in doing so.
    
3. Invite retirees to facilitate training – In most circumstances, a retiree’s job will be filled with a new employee. Who better to provide periodic training and development of this team member than the person he or she replaced? If your organization conducts in-house training events, consider inviting recent retirees to facilitate training on topics that they are experts in. This is a great way to keep this knowledge from escaping your organization, and many retirees will enjoy this opportunity to keep in touch with former co-workers and friends.
    
4. Offer temporary project assignments – Consider giving boomers the option to stay involved with your organization’s operations on a project by project basis. This is a great way to provide senior leadership on company projects while still giving Boomers the sense of being retired.
    
5. Succession planning – One of the most important and frequently overlooked techniques for retaining organizational knowledge is succession planning. Succession planning is the process of identifying, training, and preparing the future leaders of your organization. Identify a small group of potential leaders for a given position in your organization and pair this group up with your most experienced team members to share their knowledge about the position and prepare these individuals for the new roles and responsibilities they are likely to assume.

Implementing the suggestions above will go a long way in retaining the wealth of knowledge that your most experienced team members have gained through their years of loyal service to your organization and is a critical step to ensuring your organization’s success for years to come.

You may not realize it, but there is a goldmine of knowledge and expertise within your organization that is poised to walk out the door forever in the coming years. Don’t let this valuable organizational knowledge disappear as your team members blow out the candles on their retirement cakes!

Employment: A Prison or a Partnership?

Business owners that I work with regularly comment…

“Ten or twenty years ago, the bad news was I felt like I had a target on my back. The good news was most days that target felt like it was about the size of an apple. Today, between the constantly changing employment laws and my employees, most days I feel like that target is the size of a large watermelon. What should I do? Maybe I should just sell the place!”

It is easy to understand the sentiment. Consider the following items:

• For the 2006 calendar year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was involved in over 85,000 charges from individuals across the country. Those charges resulted in payments via enforcement action or litigation of over $110 million dollars.
• During the summer of 2005 a group of the most powerful labor unions broke away from the AFL-CIO and formed a coalition, “Change to Win.” The coalition is building a war chest in excess of 2 billion dollars with the express purpose of increasing the percentage of American workers who are organized. The group is committed to devoting 75% of its resources for one purpose – organizing unions across the country. And finally, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that could potentially provide leverage to employees at even the smallest businesses.

In such a climate, employment is going to be a partnership or a prison. Frankly, there is little middle ground. While it sounds overly simplistic, I regularly ask colleagues and business owners to give me an example of the “middle ground”. Guess what? I’m still waiting.

Partnerships Will Set You Free
Creating a partnership with employees is the answer to many of the challenges employers face today. People who are reasonably passionate, clear about what they are trying to accomplish, encouraged to take reasonable risk, recognized when they succeed, and held accountable in an appropriate manner when their efforts are unsuccessful, succeed more often than they fail. Don’t take my word for it. Wasn’t that the message twenty years ago of “In Search of Excellence”? What about the writings of Ken Blanchard, or the recent writings of Jim Collins (“Built to Last” and “Good to Great”)?

Creating a partnership with employees, including those who are blue-collar, semi-skilled, or marginally educated, is possible. In my experience, most employees do not want to be the boss. They simply want the boss to recognize they are not an inanimate object.

Unfortunately, creating partnerships with employees is the management equivalent to the notion of service for many companies. What business would actually come out and say, “Our service stinks?” Virtually every business touts its “commitment to excellent service.” Yet, each of our common experience suggests that the ”commitment” is actually a commitment to getting the words “excellent service” on the marketing literature, which is fairly easy to do given a decent copy editor. Bluntly, most organizations simply are not willing to exert the effort required to consistently provide great service. It requires focus and passion. It means little down time from 8 – 6 (and beyond). It means accountability for errors instead of excuses. And in some instances, it means an employee will not remain.

Creating employee partnerships is similar. It begins in the application stage and touches every single aspect of the organization, every policy, every department, and every manager. The application looks different, expectations are phrased differently, and disciplinary action looks different. But before jumping to conclusions, I am not advocating some grown-up baby-sitting service. To the contrary, I am advocating a philosophy that is clearly focused on both parties succeeding.

Sometimes succeeding means an employee gets let go because this is not where he or she will apparently be most successful. Sometimes succeeding means the longest tenured employee does not get promoted, yet he or she understands because the expectations about the organization’s goals were clear from his or her initial interview.

Success today for both business owners and employees is absolutely possible and it need not involve the threat of litigation or 3rd party representation. It does require talented people working together in some very specific ways. For both those in leadership and those led, employment should be a partnership and not a prison. Your company employs plenty of talented people. You get to choose whether those talented employees work like your partners or wards in your prison.

Which do you think will work more productively to achieve your organization’s goals?