Dramatic workforce trends require planning now: through the confluence of four critical dynamics--20 years of downsizing, the changed employer/employee contract, fewer younger workers and an aging/retiring population--much of the workforce is shrinking, making the landscape for employers vastly different for the foreseeable future.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Talent management

The just-beginning-to-retire Baby Boomers--the largest prospective generation of retirees in history--will be walking out the door, taking with them bulging Rolodexes and years of organizational knowledge and know-how. And while the problem of replacing that organizational memory won't be the 78 million Boomers' responsibility to fix, the onus will fall on companies that haven't addressed it.

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Demographic and economic trends are converging to cause dramatic shifts in the workforce, reports The Conference Board. As the recovering economy is generating renewed expectations for corporate growth, satisfying those expectations will require skilled talent. At the same time, the composition of the entire global workforce is changing. Organizations that will prosper in this new environment are those that are successful in creating a sustainable pipeline of qualified leadership and those that extract and transfer key knowledge, before the throngs of Boomers shut the door behind them.

Yet, a recent survey by consulting firm Accenture finds that at least 45 percent of respondent organizations are failing to capture critical workforce knowledge and experience from employees facing retirement, and fewer are transferring that knowledge to newer employees. These organizations simply do not have formal workforce planning processes and/or tools in place to capture their workplace knowledge. Over one quarter (26 percent) of respondents believe that, upon retirement, their organization will just let them go, without any transfer of knowledge. These findings are based on Accenture's survey in March of more than 500 full-time workers between 40 and 50 years of age.

It's been known for some time that workforce demographics are indeed changing. As more employees become available for retirement, fewer younger workers are entering the labor force. This means potentially large gaps in mission-critical skills and staggering replacement costs for recruiting, training and lost productivity, notes Watson Wyatt, a Chicago-based human-capital consulting firm.

Just what are those critical issues that require attention, how are organizations being affected and what are they doing? Moreover, what can they do to stem the tide of knowledge loss as the wave of Baby Boom retirees starts to swell?

"With more than 25 percent of the current working-U.S. population reaching retirement by 2010, companies must undertake workforce development and training initiatives to capture knowledge and minimize its loss," says Kathy Battistoni, a partner in Accenture's Human Performance Global Service line. Additionally, she says, organizations must support these initiatives with technology that can help capture critical information and distribute it directly to employees' desktops.

In prior years, Battistoni explains, when somebody retired, a company would open up a job search and fill the position. Now, executives looking at their pool of resources to fill in, don't see a one-for-one from a numbers standpoint, indicating a shortage of resources to replace the approaching retirement bubble. At the same time, it's also causing companies to consider whether they need to fill positions on a one-for-one basis.

This is partly due to the impending worker shortage, but also because smart companies are looking at where their businesses are headed and rightly asking, "What do I need?" rather than...