Knowledge Transfer in a Municipality Study on Baby Boomer Exodus from the Workforce

Abstract

A substantial number of Baby Boomers are entering retirement and will impact both public and private sector organizations. To address this upcoming challenge, organizations must establish mechanisms to identify, capture, and transfer Boomer knowledge. This qualitative phenomenological study was designed to explore the Baby Boomer phenomena through the perceptions and experiences of Boomer leaders that are eligible to retire from a North Texas Municipality. Fourteen semi-structured face-to-face interviews identified eight core themes that provide opportunities for leadership to assess organizational readiness. The eight core themes consists of obtaining perceptions from the sample size of the following: meaning of institutional knowledge, capturing institutional knowledge in current position, knowing what knowledge to capture, current methods of capturing and transferring knowledge, usefulness of written procedures, obstacles in retaining knowledge, impact of the leaving the organization, and suggestions to capture and transfer knowledge