Marianne Frazee, founder of Frazee Recruiting Consultants in Baton Rouge, occasionally will get a call from a business leader who’s in a near-panic.
“Oh my goodness, so-and-so’s getting ready to retire,” she says, summarizing their state of mind. “They’ve been with me for 40 years, and now I’ve got to replace that person. What am I going to do?”
As a wave of baby boomers begins to retire, similar scenes will be playing out more frequently on phone calls and in board rooms nationwide, Business Report details in a feature from its current issue. The boomers—who account for the largest generation and are aged between 52- and 70-years-old—have a lot of knowledge and skills not often found in younger workers, Frazee says.
“What’s going to be so important is for the aging population to be able to transfer the knowledge that they have to the younger generation,” she adds.
The national Society for Human Resource Management recently polled its members about what their organizations were doing to prepare for the aging workforce. SHRM officials were surprised to find that less than a third of respondents considered the potential loss of talent a crisis or even a problem in their industry.
In fact, 13% said they weren’t even aware of the issue, which is particularly vexing considering all the media attention on the subject. Many organizations don’t worry about the demographic shift until they actually start losing key people, says Jennifer Schramm, manager of SHRM’s workplace trends and forecasting program.
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