What Will IT Be Without Baby Boomers?
Posted April 23, 2008
According to a recent article published on the Computerworld website, statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that by 2016, one in four workers will be 55 or older. Particularly troublesome for Information Technology departments, there’s not a big influx of new talent. According to the Computing Research Association, computer science enrollments have dropped 14% each year between 2004 and 2006.
In a 2006 survey of 488 companies conducted by Buck Consultants LLC, only 42% of the respondents said that the aging workforce was a significant issue, and 29% said it had little or no significance.
But, beyond losing those the talents of the very individuals that built the IT infrastructure, are there other factors to consider when migrating the workforce towards younger individuals?
According to Dave DeLong, president of research firm David DeLong & Associates and author of “Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce”
“One of the most important things is to start a conversation about what would keep key employees long enough to capture their knowledge,” DeLong says. A powerful tool in that effort is to offer longtime staffers new challenges and even new roles. “You may lose them from that [current] role,” he says, “but you’re keeping them available to transfer knowledge about their job.”
Maybe for us baby boomers involved in the IT industry, we can parlay our experience into some post-retirement income.
Something to ponder…
