Phased Retirement
Federal employees are continuing to retire at enormous rates. What does that mean for continuity of federal services? Without proper succession planning and the transfer of knowledge via consistent and strategic methods, the knowledge gap will widen. This is where Phased Retirement comes in.
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Heretofore, there has been reluctance on the part of retirees to re-enter the workforce as retired annuitants, because of the off-set policies impacting salary and annuity payments. The answer to harnessing information and plugging the holes to prevent the loss of critical information and institutional knowledge, lie not in rehiring retired annuitants or implementing phased retirement.
Such measures are merely after-thoughts, plugging a hole without fixing the problem. Few things remain the same – the sun rises in the East and sets in the West – other than that dynamic – everything else changes. That change includes the perpetually revolving door of people in, people out. The workforce is not static and cannot survive by being treated as such.
While phased retirement is a forward movement, effective succession planning is the answer and always has been and always will be. Training people to train other people is the most important aspect of succession planning. No organization should be held hostage to what any single person or group of people know. If that is not the course taken from the Oval Office – why should it exist anywhere else in the nation.?
If something untoward were to befall any Leader of the Free World, not a significant moment in time would pass without the continuity of our government. No President is ever called back to usher a new President through his term. The Oval Office is the Office of the President – not the Office of a President. Presidents occupy the Oval Office for a defined time and all other Civil Servants occupy their posts for a defined period of time as well. Just as each President leaves a note for the next, each worker must leave a note for the next person in an even more profound manner – teach and bring the next generation along side you.
If our government were to function as the Federal Government and not the Office of A, B, and C; then the understanding of – passing on institutional knowledge would be a part of every organization’s strategic plan and mission to protect the sanctity of the nation’s business.
P. S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
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