The Baby Boomer Retirement Boom

It’s no secret that competition for talented workers is on the rise and that the retirement of Baby Boomers in the coming years will only make it worse. Soon, many companies will be scrambling to figure out how to fill their workforce with good people.

With competition for talent heating up, smart companies are recognizing that an advantage they have is the experience of their people. They’re also realizing they have to keep their people to stay competitive in the marketplace.

However, with the Baby Boomers leaving the workforce, many companies will have between 35 and 60 percent of their executives, middle managers and experienced employees retire in the next few years, leaving a vacuum of experience in their wake.

This is one of the biggest challenges companies will face in the coming decade—how to fill the void left by the Baby Boomers in a marketplace where talent is hard to find and even harder to keep. The answer lies in thoughtful succession planning.

In this new environment, companies will have to abandon the traditional “hire and fire” approach to human capital management. Instead, they’ll need to—at the board level—understand that attracting, developing and maintaining a competent and stable workforce is now of major strategic importance.

In a recent Aberdeen Group report, for example, 85 percent of Best-in-Class companies cited human capital management as either a “high” or “top–two” priority, while 78 percent of Best–in–Class companies identified a human capital management initiative as part of their overall strategy.

If your company hasn’t developed a comprehensive succession planning strategy yet, isn’t it time you did? Spectrum’s iVantage^® can help you out with that. iVantage allows you to track skills, qualifications and competencies, then set development goals to ensure that your employees have a bright future at your company.