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Within the next 10 years, 35% of current utilityemployees will be eligible to retire. Most of these retireesare senior employees, with many years of experience anda wealth of institutional and operational knowledge.Concerned about this brain drain, the AWWA ResearchFoundation and the Water Environment Research Foundationco-funded a study titled Succession Planning for aVital Workforce in the Information Age.The study analyzed demographic data from the USDepartment of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thesedata indicate that the US workforce is becoming olderand more diverse and that the number of availableworkers is declining. Within the utility sector, waterand wastewater facilities will need even more workersat a time when replacement personnel (particularlyengineers) will be in increasingly short supply.One conclusion of the succession planning study wasthat every utility should implement workforce planningto properly manage transition. A 12-step workforce-planningmodel was developed specifically for utilitiesand their specific labor needs. The study also underlinedthe importance of knowledge capture to ensure thattacit (i.e., undocumented) knowledge is not lost duringthis period of employee changeover. Includes 6 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. 97 - No. 6 Published: 06/01/2005 Number of Pages: 8 File Size: 1 file , 210 KB