Knowledge at Risk: What Happens When Boomers Retire?

Who are the baby boomers? 

The impetus for the study was concern about the transition organisations experience as the baby boom generation retires. This generation, born between 1946 and 1964 (or between 1941 and 1974, depending on the definition), was so named by the press because of the peak in births in the period after the Second World War. Baby boomers, who constitute a major demographic wave in Switzerland like elsewhere in the Western world, have also played a leading role in international cooperation, influencing and shaping it and often occupying expert or management positions in organisations. 

This generation is now leaving the labour market. Newspaper headlines in Switzerland were already predicting an unprecedented wave of retirements in 2020: « Switzerland will be hit by a wave of retirements in the coming years. [...] According to a Credit Suisse study, around 1.1 million people will retire in the next ten years. Yet this gap will not be sufficiently filled because fewer young people are entering the workforce. » 

This has consequences for Swiss society, politics and institutions. For employers, too, there is a risk of a loss of knowledge, efficiency, networks and experience (cf. card Baby Boomers Retirement). 

Knowledge built up over time 

From our interviews, we learned that some organisations in the international cooperation sector feel a critical need to capture and institutionalise the expertise of retiring, seasoned professionals as they hold unique skills acquired over long periods of their professional lives. Baby boomers have gained not only experienced-based references, judgement, attitudes, intuitions, appreciation for risk and opportunity, but also practical « hacks » (i.e. « workarounds ») which depend on their own long-time exposure to reality. 

This generation also holds systemic and institutional memory, which can drastically increase efficiency and effectiveness in decision making and strategising, e.g. taking past successes and failures into account, avoiding past mistakes, reading (weak) signs, recognising opportunities, etc. Many of these traits are deeply embedded in personal experience and cannot easily be externalised, captured, transmitted or replaced. 

While this is especially true for the baby boomer generation, retaining knowledge as seasoned team members leave remains an ongoing challenge for organisations. 

These are some of the areas where the older generation’s knowledge is central: 

• Organisational memory and historical perspectives: Understanding past initiatives and interventions, which themselves are highly dependent on their historical context, are key to effective learning as well as maintaining a degree of continuity, which in return are essential for informed decision-making and strategy development. 
• Relational networks: Personal relationships, with their inherent trust, build a social capital, which affects collaborations and partnerships as well as policy influence and decision-making. While the exit of holders of this capital can lead to a shift in priorities and approaches, there is no simple way to transfer it because it is almost entirely personality-bound. 
• Long-term management of programmes and projects: Initiatives in international cooperation often require continuity and sustained efforts over extended periods. Exiting staff can disrupt those and affect their outcomes, leaving immediate gaps in critical operational functions, decision-making capacity and planning abilities. 
• Adaptive management of complex tasks, situations and issues: Projects typically involve the relationships between an intricate net of many stakeholders, facing wicked and highly dynamic challenges and situations. Experienced professionals have developed skills to navigate and manage these changes, particularly their inherent volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as the risk involved. Flexible, adaptive management requires a high degree of resourcefulness, intuition and agility in thought and practice, which newer professionals may often lack. 

Aware of the importance of preserving knowledge in this context, many organisations keep retired employees on board as consultants or volunteers to ensure their expertise remains accessible. In the best case, the transition is gradual and well-planned, with opportunities for shadowing and the natural transfer of skills, attitudes, and approaches over time. But what can we do when these options are not available? 

From people-based to system-based knowledge management 

In our study, one participant explained that their organisation aims to « make knowledge independent of people » and tries to capture important knowledge in its systems and processes. They organise regular knowledge sharing sessions and document what is discussed to make it available globally via the intranet. In this way, the organisation tries to ensure that knowledge is not owned by a few experts, but is spread throughout the structure (cf. card Humans vs. Systems).  

The activities carried out by Swisscontact in this area deserve to be highlighted and are summarised here. 

Systems and technologies, such as collaboration platforms or knowledge repositories, can help gather and organise information into meaningful insights. AI tools enhance this process, making it possible to quickly retrieve, compare, and summarise organisational knowledge (cf. card Artificial Intelligence). However, developing and integrating these technologies into daily workflows can be challenging. Choosing the wrong tools or poorly implementing them can limit access to knowledge and hinder collaboration, impacting the organisation’s productivity.  It is also a waste of precious, scarce resources, which could be used more effectively elsewhere. 

Extensive, detailed documentation (including write-ups, documentations, reports and libraries) bears the inherent risk of excessive costs, both for the production and the consumption side i.e. for those creating and managing them, as well as for those navigating, retrieving and absorbing them.  This documentation, hence, has limited value and many strings attached (cf. card Misconceptions). 

While technology can support knowledge management, over-reliance can neglect the essential human elements of interaction and social learning. Some types of knowledge – nuanced, complex, highly contextual, « soft » - are impossible to translate this way. Yet because it's easier to handle, we tend to resort to technology as the first, dominant path. Finding the right balance between technological tools and human-centric methods is challenging.  

More adaptive and responsive models of knowledge transfer, such as mentorship programmes, succession planning and continuous learning opportunities across workforce generations, play a key role in building direct inter-personal relationships. 

A chance to bring in new perspectives 

Wanting to retain all the knowledge of the outgoing generation is an illusion. But is it really an issue? As several study participants stated, the dynamic nature of international cooperation in particular, can benefit from a generational (and cultural) shift. For some time, international cooperation was dominated by specific types of people; the next generation could now bring with them the opportunity for more diverse perspectives (cf. card Knowledge and Power). 

Efforts must acknowledge and take advantage of the opportunity of the generational transition, with younger employees introducing fresh ideas and ways of working. These must not be disparaged, and their potential must not be curtailed. Instead, the power of smartly combining the knowledge assets of the outgoing generation with the potential of the incoming generation must be leveraged and promoted. 

There is power in knowledge, and accepting that not every piece of information needs to be transferred is also an acknowledgement of making space for new ways of doing things. In the context of the efforts made by many organisations to hand over more decision-making power to partners in the Global South, the question of knowledge transfer takes on a new dimension. This momentum invites reflection on how power dynamics play out in knowledge management, particularly as organisations consider who holds knowledge and what knowledge truly matters in this evolving landscape. 

• « What’s So Special About Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer? » Identifying Challenges of Intergenerationl Knowledge Transfer,  Xenia Schmidt and Katrhin Muehlfeld
• « The Advantage of Generational Knowledge », NeuroLeadership Institute
• « Knowledge management is power », Kenneth H. Rose