How to Create a Knowledge Transfer Strategy for Retiring Workers

By 2030, all people who fall into the “Baby Boomer” demographic will have reached the retirement age of 65 years old in the United States. In the next seven years, many employers will need to account for filling in skills gaps for retirees by preparing younger workers to take on new roles and tasks.

If you have older workers who are essential to your workforce today, preparing for their impending departure is vital before it’s too late. Here are some ways to transfer knowledge from your most experienced workers to younger ones to maintain your workforce.

1. Create Professional Development Plans

First, you can prepare your workforce to develop their skills by creating a career development plan with each employee upon hiring. A manager can guide those they manage through the process, which includes:

• Mapping out short- and long-term career goals with your company
• Identifying skills to develop to qualify for each position
• Detailing credentials and certifications to obtain
• Listing out duties and tasks to accomplish

A career development plan gives employees a roadmap to grow their careers with your company. You can evolve the plans over time, but they help managers identify mentors and supervisors who can help employees develop their skills and step into advanced roles over time.

2. Build a Mentorship Program

Speaking of mentors, a mentorship program can benefit both mentees and mentors on their way to retirement. According to “Forbes,” companies with mentoring programs had 18% higher profits than average. Companies without mentoring programs had 45% worse profits than average.

Using career development plans, you can pair younger employees with older ones who serve as their mentors. Mentors can:

• Provide career advice
• Offer resources for how to develop professionally
• Teach job-related skills
• Advise younger professionals when work issues come up

Another potential benefit of a mentoring program is that it might motivate the mentors to stay at your company longer. Mentors who find meaning in passing on their wisdom and skills may derive more meaning from work. The longer they stay with your company, the more opportunity you have to integrate them into training for younger employees.

3. Invest in Learning & Development

Younger workers are interested in learning new skills and want to advance their careers. They need their employers to provide them with the opportunities to do so.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 65% of workers would stay at an employer throughout their career if the employer upskilled or reskilled them. Evaluate the most in-demand skills retiring Baby Boomers will take with them and prioritize those in your learning and development offerings at work.

You can support learning and development for your workforce in various ways. These include:

• Offer self-paced online learning programs or university courses that result in certificates or credentials.
• Create a program where senior roles train the roles below them so trainees can step in as needed.
• Build a career acceleration program for current employees.
• Cover costs for industry-related conferences and events.
• Offer tuition reimbursement for degrees that relate to advanced roles.

You need to upskill current employees to avoid more significant headaches for your business. A 2023 Great Place to Work LinkedIn poll found that 43% of people cited “lack of growth opportunities” as the top reason they quit their last position. By upskilling, you can ensure your workforce is trained as you improve retention for your business.

4. Move Project Management to the Cloud

Another way to share knowledge is by making project and task management more visible. Online project management systems like Workfront and ClickUp give entire teams access to everything they need to complete a project, including:

• Project briefs
• Supporting documents
• Task deadlines
• Status updates
• Bottlenecks and roadblocks
• Finalized projects

When you move project management to a cloud storage format that all relevant users can access, less experienced workers gain deeper insights into a project's moving parts. This visibility has a few benefits.

One is that all workers on a project can see all the steps required to see a project from commencement to completion. Any worker can gain insight into areas that affect a project, including those they don’t own. This can spark new conversations and drive learning organically throughout the project.

Another significant benefit to cloud-based project management is that projects remain in the cloud for future use. If a newer worker needs to see a workflow for an upcoming, similar project, they can reference a previous project in the system. Any helpful materials remain with the project for future access.

Digital project management systems also provide areas to ask questions, provide feedback and leave comments. That makes them an excellent communication and teaching tool for older workers to share their knowledge with those in less senior roles. Since these systems naturally foster collaboration, they can reinforce mentoring relationships and positively contribute to retaining older and younger employees.

5. Improve Manager-Employee Communication

Your company’s managers play a huge role in how successful a knowledge transfer strategy at your business is. According to research firm Gallup, it’s “most profound finding ever” is that managers drive 70% of variance in employee engagement. Managers are the people your employees typically have the most significant interactions with, so make them a central part of your strategy for dealing with losing older workers.

Managers should be:

• Regularly checking in with those they manage on career development progress, roadblocks and requested training
• Ensuring training and role transitions go smoothly by providing new employees with everything they need to succeed in a role
• Continually looking for upskilling and training opportunities for their team members

Top leadership must ensure managers help their teams thrive by providing a smooth knowledge transfer. Managers should look for signs that workers may be leaving an organization and work to successfully secure the resources needed to train replacements.

The Baby Boomer Workforce Exodus Is Here

We’re already seeing Baby Boomers exit the workforce, which will continue throughout the next decade. Employers can work on upskilling employees and position them for career advancement success within a company. Mentorship programs, learning and development opportunities, cloud-based project management and manager training can all help make knowledge transfer within a company more successful.

If you need to fill in-demand roles at your company, AccruePartners can help. Contact our recruiting firm for a free consultation.