Employers need to face up to crisis or retiring baby boomers

Australian employers will face an impending skills and knowledge crisis as multitudes of baby boomers exit the workforce in coming years, according to leading recruitment agency Kelly Services.

It is estimated that up to 4 million baby boomers will retire over the next 10-20 years, marking the largest ever loss of knowledge and skills in the Australian labour market.

ìThis will spark a knowledge crisis as baby boomers exit the workforce with decades of corporate knowledge and experience,î said Kelly Servicesí Australian Country Manager, James Bowmer.

ìIt will leave organisations with the huge task of retaining and transferring that knowledge to the younger generations, and will be one of the biggest challenges facing employers in the futureî.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statisticsí 2004-2005 Multi-purpose Household Survey, those in the labour force aged over 45 comprise 3.7 million of the 9.5 million working population.

Many of those aged over 45 years hold highly skilled and pivotal roles including those in management, teaching and health.

Mr. Bowmer said many organisations in the U.S. have already begun implementing programs to retain and preserve the knowledge of retiring employees, and Australian organisations should follow their lead.

ìIn coming years, there will be a large amount of the workforce leaving for retirement and taking with them, valuable knowledge and industry expertise, particularly in complex jobs created by technologyî, he said.

ìMany organisations in the U.S. have recognised that the retirement of this generation could cause a knowledge gap in the workforce and have responded pro-actively by implementing knowledge transfer programs.

ìThese programs ensure that relevant information and knowledge gets passed on to the right people in a systematic way.î

ìWithout the accurate transfer of knowledge and technical information, operations and systems may have to be re-established, costing time and moneyî.

The predicted shift towards phased retirement and project work for some retirees may help to ease the burden of a knowledge and labour shortage. But it wonít diminish the scale of the problem that organisations face.

Mr. Bowmer said the benefits would far outweigh the costs for Australian organisations in preparing for the retirement of this generation.