2. What are the pros and cons of developing a knowledge management database? What could you do to keep your engineers from becoming overly dependent upon a database? What steps might you take to ensure that your knowledge management project stays inclusive and accessible? The whistle blows signaling the end of the work day, and you automatically cringe. These days, that whistle seems like a warning bell for the mass exodus of employees you’ll soon experience. You’re a top manager at a nuclear power generator that employs thousands of engineers—

for now, anyway. Very soon, though, you’ll start loosing baby boomer workers to retirement. And you’re not the only one. Within one decade, 43 percent of the workforce will be eligible to retire. United States businesses expect a 10 million worker shortage by 2010.

As you wait the arrival of your management team, you start to review the topic of your after-hours meeting.

Your company will be hit hard by a double loss. Not only will you lose people (hard to replace), you’ll lose their know-how (nearly impossible to replace). Skilled engineers have spent years acquiring the ‘tricks-of-thetrade’

and developing strategies for dealing with specifi c problems, so when they retire, a huge knowledge base will walk with them out the door.

A recent survey found that 63 percent of companies worry that the retirement of talented workers will create a “brain drain.” Like many companies, yours has put off dealing with its aging workforce. Even though there’s a plan for retaining some of your older workers on a part time basis, it’s only a temporary measure. What you really need is a way to transmit knowledge from one group of employees to another—and to identify who has the knowledge you need to transmit.

Many companies in similar situations have developed knowledge management projects. Bruce Power—another nuclear power generator—uses a knowledge management system called Kana IQ that helps engineers document their solutions to certain problems so that future workers can search previous employees’ notes using decision trees and other algorithms. Technology isn’t the only way to stem the knowledge hemorrhage, however.

Some companies are implementing mentoring programs to educate their next generation of skilled employees. At Tennessee Valley Authority power plants, younger engineers are assigned to shadow older engineers to facilitate the transfer of impossible-to-document skills