Recruiting and retaining millennials is going to be key to surviving the skill shortages that are only going to get worse as more veteran employees retire. But are you so focused on developing the next generation of your workforce that you aren’t maximizing the productivity and tenure of employees approaching retirement? Here are five things you should be doing to get as much value as possible from your aging boomers.
1. It’s not about “being nice” to old people: all older workers are not created equal.
When it comes to the impact of their departure on company performance, some employees are more valuable than others. Top management of a major truck manufacturer knew that up to 50% of their workforce in some functions would be eligible to retire within three years. Leaders were concerned about the threat of losing specialized technical skills and customer knowledge used to build its highly customized trucks.
To identify specific capabilities at risk, management surveyed 5,000 employees to understand the types of knowledge that could be lost. This study showed that across the firm, about 20% of employees were classified as ‘key knowledge holders’, 9% as ‘unique key knowledge holders’, and 3% as ‘at-risk, unique knowledge holders,’ eligible to retire within five years.
Given all employees are not equal in terms of the capabilities they take with them if they leave, then strategies that extend tenure and access to knowledge should be targeted at those vital few whose knowledge needs to be retained as much as possible. Initiatives to retain knowledge, such as phased retirement offerings, should be programs targeted at the critical few, not policies applied to everyone.
2. Use “stay interviews” to find out what veterans want that will keep them around.
One useful intervention that you should consider using with all essential employees is known as the “stay interview”. These conversations help identify what workers really value about their job and what will keep them from looking at opportunities elsewhere. They are primarily designed to make employees’ work more rewarding. Conducting these interviews can be particularly valuable in sustaining the productivity of workers who see retirement on the horizon.
For example, during one stay interview, an experienced employee in a rehab department of a retirement community revealed to her manager she was unsatisfied with her job responsibilities. To keep this employee engaged, the director assigned her to larger, more complex community-wide projects that drew on this veteran’s planning and research strengths. The director also asked her to begin sharing her skills and knowledge by supervising an intern. These changes significantly re-energized this older employee.
3. Be proactive in offering flex time, phased retirement or contracting options.
When you’ve identified an especially critical employee who might quit, don’t leave them guessing about what options there might be to restructure their role into something more flexible or part time. Make sure they know that these options might be available to them.
My research shows companies with experience in phased retirement recognize that ultimately successful part-time roles must be negotiated between an individual employee and his or her boss. Whenever a part-time work role is created, both the employee and the manager must treat it as an experiment and be ready to continually refine the new arrangement.
4. Invest in building mentoring skills.
Leaders can be making a costly mistake when they assume subject matter experts know how to teach. This is one of the great fallacies of the knowledge economy. In practice, plenty of experts can’t teach very well. One of the most productive investments you can make is improving the mentoring skills of experienced employees. My co-author’s book “Teach What You Know” is a great source of practical techniques for mentoring more effectively.
But teaching others what you know is a matter of both skill and will. Veteran employees must be motivated to mentor. So instead of just telling them to coach someone, ask these experts to reflect on the most effective mentoring relationships they’ve been in. Why was this relationship so valuable? Help older colleagues connect emotionally with why teaching someone is a worthwhile experience – for them and the organization. Help them “find the feeling” of why mentoring really matters, so it doesn’t get ignored when other tasks demand attention.
5. Experiment with different knowledge transfer tactics.
The only way your organization can become more proficient at knowledge transfer is by learning to use proven tools and practices that convey know-how from experienced employees to those who need to know. Most executives aren’t familiar with these tools, but they include interventions like skill development plans, relationship mapping, concept mapping, after action reviews, and peer assists.
Obviously, different solutions are better in different situations. The best way to maximize knowledge transfer from departing employees is to integrate these solutions into the way you work, so you don’t go through a fire drill every time another valuable employee announces they’re leaving.
The need to transfer critical know-how faster is only going to become increasingly important. Organizations that get better at applying proven practices in this area will have a competitive advantage. For more insight into these solutions, see my book “Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce.”
The number of boomers set to retire in the coming years is mind boggling and many of them will take with them technical, production and customer knowledge that can never be replaced. But as you focus on developing the next generation of employees, don’t forget to squeeze all the knowledge and tenure you can out of these veterans. Many of them will thank you for it, and it will certainly contribute to overall performance.