RESEARCH HAS revealed recently another type of brain-drain threatening Australian organisations – a failure to capture workforce knowledge from older employees as they approach retirement.
RESEARCH HAS revealed recently another type of brain-drain threatening Australian organisations – a failure to capture workforce knowledge from older employees as they approach retirement.
In an Accenture study of 150 full-time Australian workers between 40 and 50 years of age, 36 per cent of respondents’ organisations had no formal workplace knowledge management systems or processes in place to attempt to capture the workplace knowledge of retiring employees.
More worryingly, 18 per cent said their organisations would let them retire without any transfer of knowledge at all. Just 24 per cent expected an intensive, months-long process of knowledge transfer prior to retirement, 35 per cent expected a process lasting one or two weeks and 16 per cent said they expected only a small, informal discussion.
As such, much organisational knowledge will be lost over the next 10 to 15 years, according to Catriona Brash, a partner in Accenture’s human performance practice. “Organisations that don’t recognise and proactively plan for this will be at a competitive disadvantage,” she said.
For HR professionals, the ageing workforce presents opportunities –employees between 45 and 64 years of age make up nearly a third of the Australian workforce. “This is exactly the type of strategic workforce challenge that HR should be taking the lead in addressing and reinforces the critical role that HR professionals play within businesses that want to achieve high performance,”Brash said.
“The findings support Accenture’s point of view that HR should be tasked with the development of workforce performance strategies that go beyond cost containment to have a positive impact on the company’s overall business and financial performance.”
The survey found 31 per cent of respondents expected to take a job with another organisation before they retired, while 61 per cent expected to remain in the same organisation (either in the same or a different position).
Nearly half the respondents’ organisations hired retired employees back as contactors – a figure notably higher than in the United States, China and the United Kingdom.
Employers were also found to be making efforts to train their employees for the evolving business skills and challenges that they will face between now and their retirement, with 64 per cent rating their employers’ performance in this area as above par.
Brash said the survey results suggest that some organisations may be leaving their preparations to the last minute. “Leading organisations will be those that proactively manage their talent from a sustainability perspective,”she warned.
“This will require understanding current exposures – not just from an aging workforce perspective, but at all levels given the shift to ‘multiple careers’,” she said.
“Organisations should then devise an appropriate action plan incorporating not just knowledge capture/retention but also ensuring their workforce planning, learning and succession planning capabilities are up to the organisational renewal challenge ahead.”
The best way for HR professionals to review capability building, employee support and succession planning activities is to improve their understanding of their organisation’s exposure to the potential loss of critical workplace knowledge, whether due to an ageing workforce or workforce turnover, she added.
“HR professionals can [then] present the threat in business value terms that senior executives can relate to, such as reduced productivity that results from knowledge gaps, potential business downtime, compliance and OHS exposures due to avoidable human error, lost revenue and customers given poorly handled employee transitions and, of course, the increased costs incurred for training and recruiting to re-build lost capability.”
