Knowledge lost as older workers leave workforce

Organisations are in danger of losing valuable intellectual property as older workers leave the workforce and take knowledge with them.

The HR Pulse study, released by the Australian Human Resources Institute, surveyed 1931 respondents in late 2014 and suggests that less than a quarter of those respondents take steps to capture knowledge as workers transition out.

Other findings of the survey include:

• Respondents identified the main benefits of recruiting older workers as the experience they bring to the workplace, the professional knowledge they have acquired and their reliability.
• A majority of respondents believe older workers are more loyal, reliable, aware and committed, and have better levels of attendance than younger workers.
• They also believe, however, that younger workers have more energy, career ambition, technology skills and creativity, and are more physically capable than older workers.
• Retirement, redundancy, illness and injury are identified by respondents as the most common reasons why older workers leave the workplace.
• Around three quarters (77%) of respondents say line managers in their workplace are offered no training in ways to manage different generations.
• Slightly more than half the sample group (53%) say age-related bias seldom or never occurs in their workplace.
• Almost four out of 10 respondents (38%) would classify a worker as old if the worker was between the ages of 50-55 (13%) or 56-60 (25%).
• Only 3% of respondents report that their workplace has ever considered menopause as an HR issue.

Commenting on the report, AHRI chairman, Peter Wilson AM, said: “It is encouraging to see that only a small proportion (12%) of respondents believe that age-related bias is common in their workplace. However, with around a third (35%) of respondents acknowledging bias sometimes occurs, it appears to be an issue which requires a degree of attention.”

A full copy of the report can be found here