Firms Gird for Brain Drain

A survey finds small businesses are better prepared than big corporations to handle a wave of retiring baby boomers.

By Alexandra Zendrian | 
 

Small businesses are better prepared than larger corporations to deal with the rising number of retiring baby boomers in the years ahead, a recent survey found.

Twenty-eight percent of more than 400 small-business owners surveyed by the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations said they either have or are preparing a plan to transfer skills and knowledge between new and retiring employees.

By contrast, only about four percent of larger businesses were prepared for the impending brain drain, the survey found. Larger firms also tended to put less importance on corporate knowledge retention than smaller firms.

According to Monster Intelligence, a division of New York-based online job board Monster (Nasdaq: MNST), smaller businesses are more vulnerable to a baby-boomer brain drain, since their company's institutional knowledge is typically concentrated among a few key people.

"Many small businesses don't think they're big enough to start a knowledge management program," Monster Intelligence Vice President Paul Jamieson said in a statement.

 

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