Why is everyone talking about…expertise loss?

What happens when long-standing expertise walks out the door? According to Gartner’s latest “Future of Work Trends” for 2025, organisations may be at risk of a new kind of talent exodus. That’s because the world’s largest economies are bracing for a record number of employees reaching retirement age, leading to a rapid loss of some seriously experienced talent. 

The tricky bit is that the latest innovations in AI are making it harder to recoup this expertise. Essentially, the tasks that would normally be handled by an intern or a junior employee are now in the remit of AI. The way employees accumulate skills is fundamentally changing — and that’s creating the perfect storm as institutional knowledge heads for the exit.

We’ve already profiled how HR might be experiencing its own unique brain drain, which couldn't be coming at a worse time given HR's unique capacity to mitigate this precipice of skill and knowledge loss. We need experienced HR leaders to help develop skills at scale for a new generation of workers, and to put in place strong success planning programs.

In conversation with SHRM, Prudence Pitter, Amazon Web Services’ Global Head of HR for their Auto/Manufacturing and Healthcare & Life Sciences division, explains “Leadership transitions can happen quickly. Therefore, having a successor in mind for senior and critical roles is imperative to business success… A deliberate approach to identify and develop future leaders has been proven to help preserve an organisation’s continuity and secure its future.”

To mitigate the loss of expertise, organisations need to do a bit of both — balancing baseline skills alongside preparing for the skills of the future. Here are some things to consider: 

• Get in touch with your HR data: Use analytics to identify potential skill gaps and retirement trends within your workforce. This data can help you strategise on training programmes and succession planning, ensuring you’re prepared for upcoming changes.

• Enhance knowledge sharing: Establish systems that capture and share expert knowledge across the organisation. This can include creating microlearnings from everyday tasks and interactions.

• Make succession planning a priority: Develop clear pathways for career advancement and knowledge transfer. Identify potential leaders early and provide them with the training and mentorship needed to step into key roles as they become available. We have a masterclass that can help.

• The succession planning process in 7 simple steps

• The strategic human resource planning (HRP) guide

• HR work with impact: How to make success measurable and visible

That's all for this week's edition of Personio Pulse: This Week in HR. Check back next week as we continue to dissect the latest trends impacting the ways we work. 

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