One of the biggest challenges life sciences organizations have begun to face – and one that will extend through each of the next several years – is the task of retaining critical institutional know-how at a time when the most experienced managers have or are about to retire or depart for greener pastures.

Sure, experienced managers have left before. But never before have so many qualified for retirement in such a relatively short window of time. And the increasing competition for top talent only exacerbates what has already been termed a serious generational brain drain.

The real challenge for today’s workplace environments is two-fold. First, to retain (possibly by transitioning them to more flexible working schedules) as many of the most experienced managers as possible. Second, to capture as much of their on-the-job learning over the course of their careers as practical and reflect that institutional and professional knowledge to a new generation of leaders.

Buying time with counter-offers

For too many organizations, the retention of key talent often boils down to making a counter-offer to someone who has already decided to leave. That may convince them to turn down another job offer, but it also won’t keep them around for long. At best, the counter-offer buys a bit more time to leverage the skills, experience and leadership of the individual manager.

But even that misguided “retention” investment will be squandered if the organization doesn’t initiate a process – however formal or informal – to extend the individual’s intellectual capital to potential successors.

But that’s no easy task. Often, key, long-time employees of an organization don’t themselves know exactly what parts of their work experience and knowledge is contributing the highest value to their organization.

A process for knowledge retention and transfer

Carlota Vollhardt, the former head of knowledge retention and transfer for Pfizer, recently told an audience from the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruitment that although key contributors may not realize the value they drive for the organization, the people around them typically do.

She says that a key manager’s explicit knowledge usually stays with the organization when they leave, but that it’s their tacit knowledge that has huge potential for creating a knowledge-based edge over the competition.

“It’s the tacit knowledge that’s really very hard to replace and hard to acquire because it requires a [continual commitment]” to extract it and pass it along to others in the workplace, says Vollhardt, now the principal of Executive Knowledge International, LLC.

One way for organizations to decide whether to make an investment in knowledge retention and transfer may be to gauge the departing manager’s willingness to share their learning. Vollhardt says that’s because, “Knowledge can only be volunteered, it can’t be conscripted.”