Did you know Mick Jagger is 65 years old? It’s hard to believe, but the lead singer for the Rolling Stones is old enough to be on the cover of AARP magazine.

The Baby Boom generation, those children of the psychedelic ‘60s, the kids that celebrated love, peace and rock-n-roll on a farm in upstate New York are getting ready to retire — 9 to 18 million of them in the U.S. workforce alone.

The Great Baby Boom Retirement Wave will present a whole host of “situations” for human resource offices nationwide — a deluge of resumes, an increase in training and development, an opportunity for departmental restructuring. But it also means something a little darker than that. It means an enormous generation will be leaving the workforce and taking their hard-earned knowledge with them. Because of this, companies will be lacking the wealth of knowledge Boomers take into retirement. And that’s a problem.

Hiring or promoting great people to replace exiting retirees is only one step in remedying it. Numerous studies have shown the snail’s pace it takes for new people to really get up to speed in a position that a retiree has used a lifetime of experience perfecting. The only way to stop the drain of knowledge that will flood out of companies as Boomers retire is to get them to share their knowledge before they go.

Ah, but there’s the rub. In workplaces all around this country, we talk a lot about teamwork. But let’s be honest. In some workplaces, it’s all about competition. Being the best. Getting ahead by, unfortunately, stepping on the other guy. Earning a promotion by out-doing one’s co-workers. Frankly, it’s about squirreling knowledge away for our own use, not about sharing it with co-workers. People are rarely rewarded in the workplace for sharing their knowledge, they’re rewarded for keeping it to themselves.

How can companies remedy this situation? Here are a few ideas.


• Make sharing knowledge a regular part of the workplace culture.
This sounds like a daunting task, but it could be as simple as setting up departmental blogs on your corporate intranet in which co-workers are encouraged to share their best tips, tactics and strategies for building a better mousetrap, so to speak. Change like this must start from the top, so get your CEOs on board right away.

• Reward older workers for mentoring their younger counterparts.
We know what the mentees get out of the relationship — knowledge — but what’s in it for the mentors? Give them days off for every mentoring session, free lunches at favorite restaurants, or a bonus for every mentee they take under their wings.

• Set up formal monthly meetings between retiring employees and their younger colleagues to encourage the flow of information.
Start 12 months before the person’s retirement date, and be absolutely clear about your expectations.

• Create new functions and/or positions for retirees, turning them into valued consultants.
This dovetails nicely with the changing type of retirement the Baby Boomers are creating for themselves. Boomers are younger, more vital and more energetic than the generation that retired before them, and many want some sort of workplace involvement even after retirement. For some, it’s an economic necessity.

• Hire workers who value sharing and working together.
Stop the problem of knowledge-hording before it starts by testing new hires for character traits involving teamwork, sharing, and working together.




Charlie Wonderlic is the President and CEO of Wonderlic Inc., a premiere provider of employee recruitment, selection, development and retention solutions. For more information about customized hiring solutions from Wonderlic, visit www.wonderlic.com