With each passing year, more and more Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce for retirement, and businesses are faced with the critical challenge of replenishing their ranks with fresh talent. Senior employees and leaders accumulate a lot of experience and know-how over the years, and as they depart, businesses are at risk of losing essential institutional knowledge.
Rebuilding bench strength and maintaining a solid “brain trust” will be an ongoing effort for companies in coming years. Below, 20 Forbes Coaches Council members share strategies to help businesses address the challenges brought on by the Baby Boomer retirement wave.
1. Build Trust
The key is building trust. Baby Boomers are more likely to share their networks, lessons learned and secret sauce when they are confident that they won’t be pushed out or become irrelevant before they are ready. In the same way, younger generations find it easier to learn from senior employees and leaders when they trust that a learning opportunity is more than just extra work. – Essey Workie, Multicultural Coaching
2. Create A Culture Of Learning
Create a culture where people across levels and generations regularly learn from each other. For example, you could hold quarterly sessions where each person engages in an experience—such as taking a training course, watching a TED Talk or reading a book—and teaches it to the team while leading a chat about how to apply it to your business’ needs. Or, create a safe forum where everyone shares one “mistake of the month” and what they learned from it. – Bonnie Davis, HuWork – Inspiring Humans at Work
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3. Define Current And Future Role Requirements
Start by properly understanding what you require from each role—not just what they do today, but what you need them to do in the future. Turn this into a competency model and assess your existing talent against that model. Discover where the gaps are, and you can begin to start developing your talent. Remember that this exercise must be forward-looking; if it’s not, you will just be doing what you have always done but expecting different outcomes. – Mark Savinson, Strategy to Revenue
4. Embrace Apprenticeship-Style Learning
Knowledge retention and transfer are critical for all organizations to manage. And while many younger folks won’t want to hear it, apprenticeship-style learning—which often requires physical proximity—is one approach that can help deepen context, understanding and mastery of institutional legacy as leadership transitions. Identifying successive leaders early is key to leveraging this approach. – Christy Charise, Strategic Advisor
5. Facilitate Internal Mastermind Groups
Create internal mastermind groups where senior employees and leadership regularly come together in small groups with up-and-coming leaders to share their experiences, stories and insights on current and potential future-state concerns. Upcoming talent will contribute to the learning of those still in senior positions by expanding upon this learning through adding their perspectives—a win-win-win. – Angela Cusack, Igniting Success
6. Invest In Your Early-Stage Talent
In any knowledge-based business, early-stage leaders are the hardest to replace and the least fungible asset. Make sure they have the “why” and the “how” of their jobs and that their goals and interests are aligned with the company’s objectives. Make sure they know you are investing in them—not just for their current roles, but for the long-term value they represent. – Bill Berman, Ph.D., ABPP, Berman Leadership Development
7. Establish A Knowledge Base
Document SOPs in writing. Capture pearls of wisdom from senior executives in video-based courses, and double down on mentoring programs to ensure the transfer of knowledge. – Pam Boney, Tilt 365
8. Bring In Recent Retirees To Guide Professional Development
Upscale your mentorship programs by encouraging seasoned, semi-retired employees to return to the workplace in a part-time or consultant capacity to train, coach and mentor younger professionals. Those who have recently retired often desire to retain their skills as well as give back to their professional community. This is a great way to share knowledge, bridge generations and grow talent. – Erin Urban, UPPSolutions, LLC
9. Share Your Sense Of Purpose
Building a business that has a greater sense of purpose than any individual is the key to attracting talent. Talented people want to be part of something for why they do it, not just what they do. Sharing the story of why the business exists and the difference it makes in the world should be a high priority. With this in place, you will attract the right people for the right reasons. – Robert Gauvreau, Gauvreau | Accounting Tax Law Advisory
10. Build Community
Create communities and bring people together—communities of practice, dialogue groups, and moments of sharing and exchanging. Convening and gathering people together helps to build a shared understanding and allows you to revisit assumptions and outdated beliefs. Focus on building a collective and evolving process of knowing rather than an individual database of knowledge that keeps replicating the same biases. – Alessandra Marazzi, Alessandra Marazzi GmbH
11. Develop A Knowledge-Sharing Network
Create a network of retired employees whom emerging leaders can request time with for situational, educational and general mentorship. As part of the promotion process, a newly promoted leader gets an invitation to the network and an assigned “wisdom leader” for their first session. – Melissa DeLuca, DeLuca & Willow
12. Map Out Essential Roles And A Succession Strategy
First, design a depth chart for essential roles and a succession strategy to locate and nurture organizational leaders. This includes leadership coaching, training and mentoring programs that foster continuous learning and growth. Target employees with varying levels of experience to prepare them to take on leadership roles when the time comes. – Lawrence Henderson, BOSS Consulting
13. Leverage Personal Interactions To Capture Knowledge
Talk to most senior-level employees, and they will tell you that institutional knowledge can’t be documented. However, it’s mission-critical that organizations capture that knowledge in such a way that incoming talent can learn from, replicate and improve upon best practices. Reverse mentoring, job shadowing and even reverse career interviews are invaluable tools to facilitate this effort. – Claire Chandler, Talent Boost
14. Hire Remote Workers Of All Ages
Companies are getting creative by hiring remote workers of all ages, even those in their 60s and 70s. This solution is a great way to access top talent, such as a retired vice president or a CEO who has left their role but isn’t yet ready to retire. The great thing about this hybrid workforce is that the “age rules” don’t apply. For every Baby Boomer who retires, there is one who wants to come back! – Tammy Kling, Voices Speakers Bureau
15. Prepare Rising Leaders For Their Next Roles Now
Assess and prepare rising leaders for their next leadership levels—not their current ones—now. Identify strengths and gaps for future roles. Delegate stretch roles, coach for leadership competency development and support rising leaders in building clear leadership plans. Assign responsibilities and opportunities beyond current job scopes to prepare both the new leaders and the rest of the organization. – Patrick Jinks, PhD, The Jinks Perspective
16. Start The Succession Process Now
Create a succession plan now. Target your best employees—even those at much lower levels—and start working with them. Provide the training and education they need to fill the gaps senior leaders will leave when they exit. – Krystal Yates, EBR HR Experts
17. Create An ‘Investment Knowledge Bank’
Create an “investment knowledge bank” within the organization. This bank is unique, as it has three functions. One, it accepts investments. These are made by existing leadership and subject matter experts. An investment is doubled if upcoming talent curates and/or codifies the investment. Two, a repository is built with priority access given to rising talent. Three, retirees can be connected as advisors. – David Yudis, Potential Selves
18. Take Advantage Of Intergenerational Skill-Sharing
Create a process to connect senior employees with one or two mid-managers or new managers to learn from each other and share ideas. Taking advantage of intergenerational skills and ideas is a great way to build bench strength. Use this opportunity to check in on current processes and potentially adapt them. Build a “Legacy Program” that will inspire senior employees to share their knowledge. – Wendy Hanson, BetterManager
19. Create A ‘Wisdom Gallery’
When Baby Boomers leave, they take more than knowledge with them. They take insights and wisdom gleaned from decades of work experience. One way organizations can capture this is to add a “Wisdom Gallery” to their online learning portal with video interviews with senior employees from all departments. These can be shared via an internal blog or as prelearning for employee training courses. – Gabriella Goddard, Brainsparker Global
20. Implement A Mentoring Program
Tap into a primary motivation of people between the ages of 50 and 65, which is a desire to nurture people or things that will outlast them. Create a culture that emphasizes the value and importance of mentoring. Design ways to celebrate mentors and mentees. Share stories about the impact on both. Make it “cool” to be in the program. Developing a buzz helps to do that. – Ron Young, Trove, Inc.
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