The Use of Software to Combat Retirement in Local Government Jobs
The situation is common across all industries but is extremely prevalent in the municipal environment and is only getting worse.
You have more municipal workers heading into retirement over the next 10 years than at any other time in history and the status of their replacements are unknown as budgets are being squeezed.
This is where software is climbing the list of necessities from "nice to have" to "must have" in order to download the information stored in the heads of workers that have mastered their jobs over the past 40 years.
Typically their record keeping and standard operating procedures have simply been something they ignored ever putting down on paper or creating written documents.
SEMS Technologies is Software Company that specializes in creating and storing data for the management of water and wastewater utilities across the country.
Their software helped over 26,000 utilities develop and electronically store vulnerability assessments and emergency response plans back in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks caused the government to require these.
This was the first step in highlighting the need for such documentation and using software rather than having the operator simply "remember" the information.
Obviously when that person retires as is the case now, the amount of information that also "retires" is becoming a serious problem.
It also can't just be any software.
The majority of these retiring employees have just recently mastered the use e-mail! The software has to have the functionality necessary to satisfy the collection of the data while at the same time be easy to understand requiring as minimal steps as possible.
This is the real challenge in the development of such software and is the key to the booming success of SEMS Technologies.
Thankfully many towns and communities have begun to budget for software tools and SEMS Technologies is growing over 20% per month as a result of this issue rising to the forefront of necessary items to upgrade facilities.
The fact remains, municipalities need to run as efficient as possible and there is no way this can be accomplished with over 60% of the staff planning retirement in the next decade.
If they don't download their knowledge somewhere, it will be lost.
You have more municipal workers heading into retirement over the next 10 years than at any other time in history and the status of their replacements are unknown as budgets are being squeezed.
This is where software is climbing the list of necessities from "nice to have" to "must have" in order to download the information stored in the heads of workers that have mastered their jobs over the past 40 years.
Typically their record keeping and standard operating procedures have simply been something they ignored ever putting down on paper or creating written documents.
SEMS Technologies is Software Company that specializes in creating and storing data for the management of water and wastewater utilities across the country.
Their software helped over 26,000 utilities develop and electronically store vulnerability assessments and emergency response plans back in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks caused the government to require these.
This was the first step in highlighting the need for such documentation and using software rather than having the operator simply "remember" the information.
Obviously when that person retires as is the case now, the amount of information that also "retires" is becoming a serious problem.
It also can't just be any software.
The majority of these retiring employees have just recently mastered the use e-mail! The software has to have the functionality necessary to satisfy the collection of the data while at the same time be easy to understand requiring as minimal steps as possible.
This is the real challenge in the development of such software and is the key to the booming success of SEMS Technologies.
Thankfully many towns and communities have begun to budget for software tools and SEMS Technologies is growing over 20% per month as a result of this issue rising to the forefront of necessary items to upgrade facilities.
The fact remains, municipalities need to run as efficient as possible and there is no way this can be accomplished with over 60% of the staff planning retirement in the next decade.
If they don't download their knowledge somewhere, it will be lost.
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