Knowledge Transfer in AEC firms - a practical solution?

As turnover is increasing due to the current economy within the AEC firms, what is happening to knowledge transfer?

Effects of today's economy:

Highly paid senior people are replaced by young, inexperienced people (mostly contract employees) - do you not agree?
Morale goes down, inspiration lacks and learning stops - do you not agree?

Practical Solution - just a thought:

I read in an article a couple of years ago on how a Texas corporation identified the need for transferring knowledge between generations and this solution is based on this corporation's idea. Here you go!

Step 1: In your organization, request all you senior executives (ex. office leaders) to conduct a peer review on what best practice or knowledge that a particular seasoned employee possesses and rate that knowledge's importance to company's mission on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very important.

Step 2: Conduct a survey among the seasoned colleagues, asking them to rate their retirement year on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being they plan to retire very soon.

Step 3: Now multiply both the ratings and on a scale of 1 to 25, the knowledge possessed by a seasoned employee of score above 20 is very critical knowledge that the company cannot afford to lose. Losing the knowledge could be either because of retirement or unavoidable cut downs.

Step 4: Find a like minded younger employee and verify with him/her of his/her future goals and pair him/her up with this seasoned professional as a mentor-protégé relationship.

Step 5: To sustain this knowledge within the company, such paired-up teams could be assigned to develop tools or techniques to capture this knowledge and share it with the rest of the company!

Results:
Knowledge transfer happens, morale increase because employees feel that they are valued, ability to develop bench strength during the tough times like this increases and will prove beneficial when high times start in the near future!

This is just a thought, what do you folks think?
Thanks
Prem

How do you see sustainability as a concept?... Is it socialism or capitalism or socio-capitalism??

I ran into this following link about "global mindshift"...

http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

it is pretty cute but precise in telling the story...

sustainability is say if we call it... providing equality in terms of resource availability and resource accessability and resource usability... then what does it fall under?? capitalism / socialism???

one may say neither.. and I tend to agree with that... but what is it then?

one may ask... why bother to define??? I may say... well it certainly is the new world order now... (if you dont agree with that... please watch TV or browse the internet) the world is getting connected more and more than ever... think of the open-source era and think of blogs like this for heaven sake... you cannot deny the fact that this has something to do with the new perspective on mother earth...

I dont want to get political here in my blog by any means... but.. as in terms of sheer concept... I remember once talking to a colleague of mine about sharing knowledge and growing as a team...

and I was looked at as a socialist... coz growing as a team is not captalist...

one may ask... is sustainability about sharing knowledge... in a big picture sense I say yes... so one can make informed decisions that may be helpful to the planet we live...

socialism is a broad and age old concept... this one-ness that we try to describe and achieve in this new world order... could this be called the new socio-capitalism....

even though socialism and capitalism as concepts are mainly associated with economy... these terms have been loosely associated through out history with ways of life...

in my littlest expreince and exposure if I attempt to define this term - socio-capitalism... here it is.... in lamest terms...

SOCIO-CAPITALISM: "what ever we do should work for and benefit the mass and yet the individual should be able to reap his / her personal benefits based on his / her efforts"

I know I sound like a politician... but if you think about it... everyone who believes in this one-ness as I do will encounter somebody in their path who doesn't believe in this.. how do we explain???

food for thought!!