Book Description
Executives today recognize that their firms face a wave of retirements over the next decade as the baby boomers hit retirement age. At the other end of the talent pipeline, the younger workforce is developing a different set of values and expectations, which creates new recruiting and employee retention issues. The evolution from an older, traditional, highly-experienced workforce to a younger, more mobile, employee base poses significant challenges, particularly when considered in the context of the long-term orientation towards downsizing and cost cutting. This is a solution-oriented book to address one of the most pressing management problems of the coming years: How do organizations transfer the critical expertise and experience of their employees before that knowledge walks out the door? It begins by outlining the broad issues and providing tools for developing a knowledge-retention strategy and function. It then goes on to outline best practices for retaining knowledge, including knowledge transfer practices, using technology to enable knowledge retention, retaining older workers and retirees, and outsourcing lost capabilities.
Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce FROM THE PUBLISHER
This book shows how losing human knowledge in a technology-intensive era can seriously affect organizational performance. It also explains what executives can do to retain critical know-how as veteran workers leave. Loaded with anecdotes and case examples, Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce reveals how this hidden problem, which threatens virtually all industrialized nations, is becoming extremely serious for many organizations. Most important, the book provides a comprehensive framework to help managers improve the retention of vital knowledge both from older workers who retire and mid-career employees who leave unexpectedly. Lost Knowledge delivers a detailed action plan to guide leaders in addressing the interdependent challenges of increased retirements, more competitive recruiting, and greater demands for employee retention that will be a key to success in the years ahead.
SYNOPSIS
Because the baby boomers have worked through a period of unprecedented technological change, and many have spent a big part of their career at one workplace, as they begin to retire, much irreplaceable knowledge will follow them to Florida and Arizona. DeLong (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) asks managers why they should care, how specific knowledge might vanish from their organization, the impact the loss would have, and how to retain critical knowledge when the knower moves on. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
As long-term members of the workforce retire, what happens to their knowledge and skills? DeLong (Executive Support Systems: The Emergence of Top Management Computer Use), a research fellow at the MIT AgeLab and adjunct professor at Babson College, studies the effects of lost knowledge. The issues he addresses here include why organizations should care about the threat of lost knowledge, the different ways that knowledge disappears, and the effect of lost knowledge on performance. Most important, it considers how organizations can retain more critical knowledge in the face of major turnover, owing not only to an aging workforce but to increased attrition among mid-career employees. Solutions to the problem presented here include storytelling, mentoring, interviews/videotaping, and training. DeLong makes his points by drawing on case studies, e.g., owing to early retirement, NASA engineers lost knowledge on how to land on the moon. Extensive chapter notes list sources for further reading. An important, timely book; highly recommended for academic libraries.-Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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