Picking your employees' brains

摘要

With retirement of baby boomers on the horizon, public utilities inevitably face the loss of experience and knowledge compiled by key staff members that have worked there for decades. The ensuing exodus of knowledge creates a gap in operational continuity, which can ultimately hamper the ability of a public utility to carry on its mission effectively and can increase opportunities for operational mistakes. Utilities must come up with creative approaches for replacement of baby boomer staff, given a limited workforce pool that will be aggressively pursued by the public and private sectors alike. Knowledge management systems are one method of providing a platform for the retention and sharing of the explicit knowledge residing within an organization.