The Australian Public Service (APS) is facing a potential crisis in knowledge retention, with a quarter of senior and executive staff expected to retire in the next five years
The Australian Public Service (APS) is facing a potential crisis in knowledge retention, with a quarter of senior and executive staff expected to retire in the next five years.
Kate Andrews, intellectual capital partner with accounting firm BDO Kendalls, has worked with several public sector organisations to identify knowledge risk and found that the loss of mature age workers will leave major gaps in organisational knowledge.
A recent government study had quantified the impact of baby boomer retirement. Almost one third of APS employees were aged between 45 and 54, compared with only 19 per cent a decade ago.
“Because of this change in demographics, the APS is facing the loss of approximately 23 per cent of these staff by 2008,” Andrews said.
“Even more alarming is the fact that 69 per cent of employees within this age group belong to the senior executive service (SES) and 46 per cent work at executive level, and collectively hold much organisational knowledge.”
The government study indicated that employees were uncertain that their corporate knowledge has been effectively transferred to the next-generation of workers.
“Finding ways to efficiently capture knowledge is now a major imperative, given the increasing emphasis on knowledge work in the public sector, and the risk posed to corporate memory through loss of employees,” Andrews said.
Public sector organisations had to face issues around risk from knowledge loss and how to best tackle it, and Andrews warned that the cost of knowledge risk in time, resources and missed opportunities increased over time.
She said public sector departments first needed to identify the degree of knowledge risk they faced by analysing critical expertise within their organisation.
Late last year the Australian Government launched a mature-age strategy for the Australian Public Sector which employs 131,711 people.
The guidelines focus on flexible working conditions, phased retirement and less demanding roles for older workers so they can achieve a better work/life balance.
