Mining Grey Matter Gold Before it Vanishes | DM Review | Industry Led, Industry Read

Mining Grey Matter Gold Before it Vanishes

Article published in DM Direct Newsletter
July 18, 2003 Issue

By Kimiz L. Dalkir

We are entrenched in an era when companies must deal with significant change within their employee base, as organizations rapidly approach a critical mass in their employee cycle. Recent figures show that 50 percent of the U.S. government workforce will be eligible for retirement by the year 2004; 15,000 Canadian civil servants are expected to retire from the federal government within the next five years and the numbers are similar in Europe. Combined with expertise transfer due to heavy employee turnover, companies are at risk of being devastated by loss of intellectual capital.

How can this be? Surveys show 80 percent of an organization’s critical knowledge and know-how resides in the heads of a few key people and only 20 percent has been documented either in paper or digital form. Companies