Bad News for Employers…Retirement Age is Dropping

When I speak and consult with corporations, I often bring up the concept that the retiring boomers are going to be leaving the workforce in a few short years taking with them years of invaluable experience. Experience that cannot easily be replaced, I raise this alarm so that companies can begin to think about capturing all that lost knowledge before it disappears and using some of the tools of the gamers to do it.

Inevitably, someone will say, “Don’t worry, Karl. We boomers are going to be healthy and strong and we are going to work well past the ‘traditional’ retirement age so, at our company, the boomer retirement exodus is not going to hurt…we are going to work a lot longer than people think.”

Unfortunately for those companies and many others, the statistics do not support that view. In fact, the retirement age is consistently getting younger and younger. Check out this post Retirement Changes Dramatically Over the Years.

This chart and the post clearly indicate that boomers are not going to work as long as they think they are. Therefore, your company needs to think seriously about transferring knowledge from the boomers to your incoming gamers before it is too late. Do you have a plan?

Read David DeLong’s book Lost Knowledge for some great information about the looming boomer retirements and subsequent shortage of knowledge in the workforce. It will scare you a little. After you read that book and you want some practical examples of how to transfer the knowledge, read Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning. It’ll supply you with the tools you need to transfer knowledge successfully.

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