* IT executives look to preserve mainframe and legacy-system knowledge as aging employees retire
Today’s topic dovetails nicely into that of earlier this week: contingency planning. In that newsletter we covered the concept of ensuring you have written, centrally located documents on how each of your staffers performs his or her job. Even better, you can have your staff cross-trained so there’s at least one person to take over a position if there is an absence.
This week’s Management Strategies story in Network World examines this topic from a more long-term standpoint. Specifically, it looks at how companies are handling the impending retirement of their first-generation IT professionals, and along with those people, the knowledge and skills they possess that will still be vital to the company after they’re gone.
For example, many enterprises still rely on mainframes for key elements of their business. Yet many of the younger IT staffers hired these days do not have any experience or education on mainframe-related data center technologies, such as COBOL. Once those experts get their gold watch and head down to Florida, who’s going to be maintaining the still-critical mainframe? Unless you plan now, it won’t be those client/server kids.
While this may not be a pressing issue now, it will be in about five years. Thousands of veteran IT professional are expected to retire within that time. Take a look around your company: What staffers are near retirement and what do they know that may be considered niche these days? What can you do to avert a potential intellectual catastrophe?
* One idea is to consult with your local college or university to see if they offer classes in languages on the extinction list, such as COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/I. You could send your younger staffers to these courses so they can get the footing they need.
* With many seasoned IT professionals out of a job, there are bound to be many well-versed in these areas who would be amenable to teaching their knowledge to a new generation. This could be cheaper than enrolling people in a university course.
* A third option is the cheapest. Have your seasoned IT pros teach the younger generations about these technologies and how they fit into your business. You could even have them cross-trained so those learning could get real, hands-on experience.
* Finally, be on the lookout for candidates with such skills next time you’re hiring.
Check out this week’s Management Strategies story in its entirety for more ideas on how to battle this upcoming problem: https://www.nwfusion.com/careers/2003/0414man.html
