Defusing the demographic time‐bomb

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine how organizations can retain the business knowledge and skills of older workers as they retire or move on. Design/methodology/approach – Describes the nature of the ‘demographic time‐bomb’, the effects it could have on organizations, and the knowledge‐management and other systems that organizations can use to minimize these effects. Findings – Highlights the need for a knowledge‐retention programme, under which an organization can start to identify knowledge at risk and establish central knowledge repositories. Creative retirement policies, retiree workforce pools and a lessons‐learned capture process from retirees ensures the effective transfer of vital information from these people. Building a database of retirees for temporary, contract employment and special‐project work is useful. An organization should develop a retiree/worker mentoring programme to encourage mentoring and cross training, while instilling in pre‐retirees the commitment to knowledge sharing and collaboration. Creating inducements to learn is also important. Practical implications – Emphasizes process management in transferring knowledge and skills from older workers to their younger colleagues. Originality/value – Stresses that, while building the necessary knowledge‐management architecture is the easy bit, managing the people aspects is more challenging. Suggests some ways to overcome these challenges.