Part 2 - A New Twist on the Impending Doomsday

Consider the chilling example of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. Back in the 1960s when President Kennedy challenged America to get to the moon within 10 years NASA spent $24 billion (in 1969 dollars)--and at one point employed 400,000 people--to send 12 astronauts to the moon. But in the 23 years since the Apollo program ended, the engineers who carried crucial know-how in their heads, without ever passing it on to colleagues, have retired or died (or both). At the same time, important blueprints were catalogued incorrectly or not at all, and the people who drew them are no longer around to draw them again. So to fulfill the Bush administration's promise to return to the moon in the next decade, NASA is essentially starting all over again. Estimated cost to taxpayers in current dollars: $100 billion.³

And consider a call that one of our senior consultants received from her past employer just 2 months ago. Our colleague retired from Pacific Bell (now SBC) 6 years ago and was just called to return to work as a contractor, as the assignment required specific knowledge and skill sets that were just not available in the current workforce; scrambling to find those people whom they encouraged into early retirement just a few years back.

Ok, so this begs the question, “how?” How does corporate America begin the process of retaining critical knowledge and identifying those newer colleagues who have the potential to rise to greater heights but who have not yet had the time to demonstrate these capabilities on the job?

Mentoring is especially useful for transferring tacit knowledge. But traditional mentoring alone is of limited value, for the simple reason that it usually exposes “mentees” to only one person's expertise. So defense contractor Northrop Grumman has created what are called communities of practice--companywide groups that meet, in person and online, to share information.⁴

Still another mechanism for transferring expertise is something General Electric calls "action learning teams."⁵ Action learning teams put people together from several disciplines--manufacturing, sales, marketing, legal, finance--to solve particular problems. GE combines such programs with deliberate fast-tracking of the most promising young people, giving them "stretch" work assignments designed to teach them to think on their feet.⁶ Tools like the Rembrandt Portrait^® Personality Assessment can be effective at identifying those colleagues with the potential to grow into leadership and other critical positions, allowing their employers to target and jump start their development.

Another approach companies are taking: pooling resources. For example, in 2001 management at Procter & Gamble started worrying that Boomers retiring en masse would decimate their R&D department. Eli Lilly, with which P&G had done several joint research projects, had similar concerns. So the two companies formed Yourencore.com, an online network of retired and semi-retired research scientists and engineers that matches available brainpower with short-term R&D projects. Two more employers, Boeing and National Starch & Chemical, recently joined the group, which draws on a database of 470 scientists.⁷

To this point, some of our customers have developed their own form of succession planning and mentoring by combining the use of our 360-performance review program, the CareerNavigator with Rembrandt Portrait data to develop a well-rounded view each colleague’s potential and demonstrated capability, from entry level to more senior employees. By combining performance feedback – applied capability, with Rembrandt data – innate capability, our customers are able to target individuals with the potential to take the lead and harness the knowledge held by older workers while pinpointing areas where critical development is needed. This then allows our customers to team up those who possess the knowledge and capability with those in need of development.

The most obvious way to retain older people's critical knowledge is to, well, retain older people--at least part-time, until they've had a chance to transfer the skills, experience and knowledge to the younger members of the workforce.⁸

These are just a few examples of what firms are doing. I would enjoy hearing from you regarding your company’s efforts to retain critical knowledge and the programs you have developed or are considering to facilitate this.

A New Twist on the Impending Doomsday

Unless you’ve been asleep for the past year, you couldn’t have helped being inundated with articles and research reports warning of the impending shortage of workers in the US workforce as nearly 80 million Baby Boomers enter into retirement. At first glance, anyone in their right mind should quake in their boots---64 million people will be poised to exit the workforce by 2010, which means that 40% of our total workforce could be retiring, theoretically leaving companies to scramble to find new employees, beginning within just 4 short years.¹ Ouch!!!

Upon deeper analysis, however, many researchers, including myself, feel that this hype is just part of the media blowing the situation out of proportion. When my team and I delved into the data available we were able to debunk the theory that we will soon run out of people to hire. In fact, in the next 15 years, according to our research, the US workforce will only be short some 3 million workers, a mere 2% of the workforce required; and this number does not count the jobs likely to be outsourced to other countries.²

To this point, according to a 2004 AARP study, 79% of Baby Boomers plan on remaining in the workforce in their retirement years.³ They may shift careers, seek part time status, or the ability to work from home, but the majority of Boomers have no intension of fully retiring – they are healthy, want to remain productive, and in some cases, have to work to sustain their quality of life. Regardless of reason, most Boomers will be active in the workplace, despite the doom and gloom forecasts.

However, our research has uncovered a stealth concern that all employers should be paying attention to – the coming shortage of qualified candidates. This is far different from the forecast that we will run out of people to hire, and instead, focuses on the quality of the people who will be available in several years.

Baby Boomers have more education, experience and knowledge than any other segment of our population. New entrants into the workforce will be much less prepared to take on the challenges of the work place, due to poorer education, lack of direct experience, or language barriers for new immigrants, and the like – a far more disastrous situation than what is being alleged by the so called “experts.”⁴

I will be delving deeper into this topic throughout the course of the year and will be providing some clear direction on how our customers can develop strategies and systems to prepare for this eventuality. For now, I’d like to leave you with a few questions:

1. Is your company prepared to harness the knowledge held by Boomers that MUST be retained and passed on to the next generation?
2. Is your company prepared to hire for the candidate’s ability and to take on the responsibility for training new employees? (Remember, education is sliding and new entrants lack the needed skills to quickly excel.)
3. Is your company prepared to manage the diversity of the new workforce – Managing the cultural differences between younger and older workers? Providing new colleagues with the freedom to innovate and achieve on their own? To move beyond command and control structures to one of empowerment?

I look forward with great enthusiasm to exploring these issues with you and helping you to position your company for future success.

Thank you all for your continued interest in and support of our services.