Brain Drain

Companies and government agencies have long anticipated the "retirement brain drain"---the tidal wave of Baby Boomers starting to leave the workforce, which could wipe out decades of institutional memory and leave the organizations without many of the skills and insider knowledge they had taken for granted.  But few have taken adequate steps to prepare for the inevitable.

"If you ask companies about it, they say it's a very high priority, but if you ask them if they're doing anything, there aren't that many that are," says Diane Piktialis, research working group leader at the Conference Board, a New York based business research organization.

Many industries have already started to see the first wave of Baby Boomer retirements, and some companies are experimenting with solutions such as phased retirements, incentives for workers to stay on the job longer, efforts to transfer knowledge from retirees to younger workers and attempts to bring retirees back for mentoring or short-term projects after they have departed.

Two companies that have taken the practice of hiring back retirees are Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly.  Faced with the prospect of losing large numbers of Baby Boomer researchers, the two companies joined forces in 2003 and launched YourEncore, which created a pool of former employees and other experts whom each could call on for temporary help.

Since then, YourEncore has grown by leaps and bounds, with 28 member companies, and counting---including Boeing, General Mills and Unilever---and a pool of 3,600 scientists and specialists in engineering and product development.

Workers are paid an hourly rate--calculated from their base salary when they retired, inflation and other factors--and YourEncore handles the paper work, withholding money for Social Security, paying the employer's part of payroll taxes and providing liability insurance and workers' compensation. 

Source: Human Resource Executive, April 2008