They know where all the bodies are buried. And how to fix the copier.

April 6, 2017 9:25 AM

One of the best things about my workplace is that many employees have been here FOREVER. That is also one of the worst things about it. Faced with the retirement and voluntary departure of an aging (but extremely knowledgeable) slice of our company's workforce over the next decade, what do we need to worry about?

With so many long-timers on board (at all levels, from corporate office to industrial labor roles, in every sector- Finance, IT, HR, Factory Supervisors, etc.), the next 10 years will see an incredible amount of tacit knowledge walk out the door. Little to no effort is being made to mitigate this loss. Some folks have legit been here for over 40 years.

For example, no one thinks documentation is worth doing, since all you need to do to get the scoop is to go pick the brain of the guy down the hall, who's been here for 25+ years and knows everything. No one goes about their day with a mindset of planning for the next wave of employees. That you have to know where Ethel keeps her secret spreadsheet in order to complete the monthly Widget Reconciliation process is NOT how a modern global company should be operating.

Aside from getting better about documenting processes and preserving "headcanon" knowledge, what are some other risks this scenario will present?

What can we do now to prevent future self-talk like, "Damn, why didn't we ____________ before ____________ left the company?"

posted by I_Love_Bananas to Work & Money (23 answers total)

You've identified the solution - documentation - but really, this is a question of people / fears / incentives. Ethel doesn't want to tell you how her spreadsheet works because she doesn't want to be expendable.

For that reason, this needs to be a directive from leadership. My recommendation would be that leadership doesn't mention aging workforce issues, just that the company is at risk when procedures aren't documented. People should be commended for helping document their institutional knowledge and processes. It would also be best to hire or task a current employee with writing the documentation, so it is consistent and they ask the right level of questions.

Also worth noting - for my workplace, a lot of this was solved by upgrading large systems like finance and HR. Also, in other cases, making a newer employee the backup of a lifer helps spread the knowledge.
posted by beyond_pink at 9:38 AM on April 6, 2017 [6 favorites]

When we had early retirement incentives that led to a big chunk of our institutional knowledge walking out the door with only about a month's notice, someone came up with an email questionnaire that asked the general and basic questions that might tease out some of these "institutional knowledge" questions.

The people taking over a specific person's job would also sit with them for a day to pick their brains. It was still a big loss, and I don't know if there was much more that could have been done.
posted by ldthomps at 9:56 AM on April 6, 2017

Recently sat in on a roundtable at a conference of knowledge industry folks (so IT and corporate librarians mostly) and we talked about being in similar situations. Some things that sounded interesting:
- An in house wiki created, with FAQs, updated every time someone learned something like "go ask Ethel." A second company had gamified it, so that rewards were tied to entries.
- Learning lunches. So going to someone and asking them as the "expert on unjamming the copiers" to do a 30 minute learning lunch. Food was provided. Lots of folks showed up for free food, but the knowledge gained was worth it. (Include people who wouldn't normally be considered - for us we've seen more people show up for the admin assistants than we've seen for the PhDs.)
- Oral Histories. As Ldthomps mentions - having someone shadow as a replacement, only recording them. Have pre-set Q&As (similar to their mentioned email questionnaire) but let that just be a guide.

If it makes you feel better, you're not alone. Last year we had four guys retire in one day, with 120 years of experience between them. And a few weeks later we discovered that there was a "secret room" of files that no one had any idea about... so that was fun. If you look out there in the "industrial research" field, there have been a lot of journal articles/presentations that you might find useful.
posted by librarianamy at 10:06 AM on April 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

I think it's an advantage that when these people leave, it most likely won't be a sudden departure--they'll have a target date in mind, probably months before it actually arrives, and thus they might have some time for planning and documenting.

As basically a one-woman show, I did a good bit of this in my last job before I left--mostly because when I came in four years prior, I had very little documentation of process and of the details of my work that I really needed to know; my supervisor had been there about two months, so institutional history definitely wasn't there and I had to do a LOT of digging on my own to orient myself. I didn't want to leave someone else in that state. (For context, I'm a grant writer, and I handled 30-40 different funders at that agency.)

So, I put together what I'd wanted most when I got there--a solid calendar that had all the application/reporting deadlines I could gather, and a little detail about each funder/process. I also composed a "Things You Should Know" document for my successor--details as significant as how to pull evaluation data from the national database and as insignificant as where the "good" letterhead lived (which is significant enough when you really need it). My successor has been able to be in touch with me (I agreed to that when I left) and she said she uses those documents every day.
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:09 AM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is there a policy of handover notes where you work? In the UK, it's common for the last month of an employees' notice to be spent largely doing handover - this means documenting common procedures so that the person after you knows how to do what you were doing. I wrote an entire novel-length set of handover notes when I left my last two jobs, which really helped those who took over my workload. (On preview, what dlugoczaj said.)
posted by Ziggy500 at 10:10 AM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

one of the reasons why I, as a manager, love maternity/paternity leave is that it forces our teams to live without a colleague for six weeks. That's a fantastic time to uncover many of the secret things that they did and see what breaks after they leave. Then, after six weeks, they come back! And they're happy to answer questions! Or move on to new things because we load balanced their responsibilities while they were away!

In the absence of leave, and assuming that they have some vacation time owed to them, could their bosses start encouraging them to take more time off? Then when they do leave, don't treat that as "oh, let's put so-and-so's job on pause until they're back from holiday." Treat it as, "let's pretend that so-and-so just retired and we need to pick up their work for them and learn what questions to ask."
posted by bl1nk at 10:28 AM on April 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Great stuff, thanks!

What else (other than "brain drain" and documentation-related stuff) should we be heading off? What else happens when long-term people leave?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 10:57 AM on April 6, 2017

Best answer: In general, cross-training can help a lot-- so can vacation time as mentioned above.
[in banks, I believe all staff are required to take at least one Two-Week vacation per year.]

Be aware, in general, of who your department's liaisons are to other sectors or industries. You might want to plan for additional representation.

Don't forget the Log-ins and Passwords to all databases used by your company-- specifically to the Admin. modules.

Annual or Monthly statistics and reports are often the products of secret formulas or data sources. Move these spreadsheets and cheat sheets into accessible files/folders.

Be sure that there is ongoing back-up to the folks who receive, identify, and process invoices for goods and services.

Security codes and procedures should be updated and documented.
Staff Emergency Contacts and home addresses should be routinely updated.

Also, don't wait for planned retirements--we've had quite a few unplanned retirements due to individual or family health issues.
posted by calgirl at 11:28 AM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

What else happens when long-term people leave?

These people may have relationships with contacts at clients or suppliers who will do them a favour - speed up a delivery or a payment etc - because they've been chatting to them about baseball for 20 years. You can't really replace that, but the oldtimer may want to introduce a younger employee in the same dept so they can start building a rapport.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 11:34 AM on April 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Anecdote: BC Hydro routinely engages in projects with 10-20 year timelines.

A buddy of mine was recruited explicitly as a replacement for someone who is slated to retire in 5-10 years, to learn the senior engineer's job and seamlessly transition once the inevitable retirement occurs.

From what I hear, there's also redundancy of positions in the event of the unforseen.
posted by porpoise at 11:36 AM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is always talk about the "bus" on my team. There is one member who documents everything as a matter of course for every project, every system customization, every support issue that has come up, in case the "bus" gets her (or she wins the lottery) and she doesn't come back to work. This also has the benefit of taking some of the pressure off her from being non-expendable. If you're the expert in something, then everyone will come to you with questions and who wants to deal with that?

Actually, the 44 page support guide she put together answers 95% of questions that the rest of the team usually has, so it results in a more efficient workplace, and it frees people up to get real work done.
posted by eatcake at 11:38 AM on April 6, 2017

For that reason, this needs to be a directive from leadership. My recommendation would be that leadership doesn't mention aging workforce issues, just that the company is at risk when procedures aren't documented.

Agree not to mention retirement or attrition. Perhaps your company is "being audited", possibly for "insurance reasons", and all processes need to be documented.
posted by vignettist at 11:39 AM on April 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

At our office, every file has an online, accessible to all parties notes section and we are routinely reminded in meetings and when we turn in projects to document all notes in the file. Supervisors and managers check that notes are documented. Of course, our work truly is audited every year so it's imperative and has become second nature to everyone but the newest of employees, who fall in line pretty quickly.

Maybe you really do need to do a yearly audit of everyone's processes, or make it a mandatory project as part of completing their yearly review.
posted by vignettist at 11:45 AM on April 6, 2017

Another Googleable phrase is "Business Continuity Planning". This is often done for preparations of dealing with natural disasters. If you'd like you can think of your situation a slow motion mudslide of talent out the door.

In addition to knowing the process without documentation, I find that people entrenched in a position for a long time also have a great sense of prioritization of work. Requests might be normally handled first in first out but long termers really know how to prioritize other requests whether it be because of seniority, criticality or congenial favor trading.

In addition to the process itself, they often know why a process is the way it is and why other perhaps obvious ways of doing business were rejected. I tend to see this a lot when new oversight is brought into an area and the oversight people ask the same serious of questions about why aren't you doing X, Y and Z.
posted by mmascolino at 11:48 AM on April 6, 2017 [4 favorites]

A small thing, but one we've just dealt with. Former employee handed in his company iPhone on his last day but no one thought to ask him his password. It was not a significant problem to get past the former employee's computer passwords. However, making the iPhone useful again was a three-day adventure.
posted by angiep at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Make sure you have multiple people listed as contacts for your domain registration and hosting. It really stinks to lose your company's website and email because someone retired/died and nobody got the renewal notices or paid the fees.

(This might not be an issue for your particular company, but I have seen it happen with smaller ones.)
posted by belladonna at 12:42 PM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

For key leadership roles at my firm, we've hired a replacement person months in advance of the leader retiring so that they can work side-by-side for a while, then take charge of the role while the leader gets some time to wrap up other projects that always got pushed to a back burner (like documentation). Then the leader retires. It's expensive, but for people with enough knowledge, it's worth it.

(You might also be wrong about when people are going to retire unless the issue is somehow forced. Sometimes people can't retire or don't want to because they enjoy the work.)
posted by purple_bird at 2:53 PM on April 6, 2017

Rather than the negative sounding "bus" up-thread, we talk about how "if you win the lottery and run away to Fiji how will our organisation cope?". I had a "procedures and documentation party" where I gave everyone a ticket and the spiel about they may win big and I will never see them again so lets get the important stuff down while sharing some delicious food. In reality, we didn't do as much of the documenting at the party as I had thought - but we collectively built a "table of contents" of important pieces of each job (passwords, contacts, main tasks broken down by hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly etc) that each person could then work on filling in.

When I began my job (several incumbents had cycled through) I got a one-day shadow (to be honest it didn't really help) and a 40 page "manual" written by someone a few incumbents ago that I rarely refer to.

We have also had significant turnover and to be honest, it has not been the great lost of institutional knowledge that I expected. It was actually good to not be stuck doing something just because the previous person had done it and instead see what the pinch points were in the various jobs and use creative problem -solving to come up with solutions that work NOW (as opposed to twenty years ago when the pinch point was discovered by the incumbent).
posted by saucysault at 3:03 PM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

^edit: I gave them a LOTTO ticket, not a ticket to Fiji, lol
posted by saucysault at 5:56 PM on April 6, 2017

Do you know what you mean by documentation? Our biggest issue was that the long timers didn't really have the expertise/interest/time to do the documentation to modern standards. One person thought of it as a flow chart, another did a wikipedia type article and another did a list of steps. Another always included steps like "call Jane" rather than "call the admin for the VP-IT." All of which have their place but that place is not as the primary piece in an SOP manual.

The first steps are the hardest. What really helped us was when one person was charged with cross departmental documentation and removed from the majority of other duties. He and QA management developed the template for what documentation looked like, then he worked with key staff to convert those flowcharts/lists/names into documentation, then had the key staff review it to their satisfaction, then gave it a different staff person and asked if they could work off that document if needed. Then rewrote until all parties were happy. He had a time frame to get this done by and no other distractions...also a specific order of importance from a higher up who kept him on track. Turned into a bit off a fun "my day with Sami...how cool" type thing.

But once written, that has been a golden standard, both easily mimicked and updated now.
posted by beaning at 6:32 PM on April 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: "What else (other than "brain drain" and documentation-related stuff) should we be heading off? What else happens when long-term people leave?"

A loss of "institutional history" is the biggest thing that I've seen in the 23 years I've been in my office. Decisions that were made 5, 10, 15 years ago are remembered by only 10% of staff. That may seem like a long time but that is how it is in my job. Newer staff will say, "Why don't we manufacture widgets that are yellow and turn to the left?"

And us old peope will say, "Reason. Reason. History of discussion. History of pros and cons. Decision. Rationale for decision."

And we then say, "If you can out-reason that decision or add new reasons, let's open the discussion again."

It's not about documentation, the documentation of those decisions (email discussions and meeting notes) is long gone.

What I would suggest is figure out how to 1. recognize and support your work culture of decsion-making and 2. figure out how to have long-term staff actively mentor newer staff.

PARTICULARLY those staff you want to move into key management or other positions.
posted by ITravelMontana at 8:07 PM on April 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Once they are gone, you will realize that Bill in accounting was taking liberties with the books all these years, but nobody knew because he was the only one with access, and that Ethel was so efficient because she didn't follow any of the organization's policies.
posted by chickenmagazine at 8:14 PM on April 6, 2017

I'm one of these people in my workplace and I've been in discussions about implementing a variation on Netflix's Chaos Monkey but for people.
posted by fullerine at 12:35 AM on April 7, 2017