Got a tip on this interview with a Deloitte HR consultant named Andy Peck on Talent Management / Succession Planning.

His Take:

The biggest long-term issue is the lack of talent-management strategies and the relationship with changing demographics. By 2008 many baby boomers will be retiring, which will put enormous pressure on the workforce. One day companies will wake up and ask, “Where are the people?” It could be cataclysmic. Besides the lack of personnel, we are not planning how to fund pensions or how to transfer the knowledge of older workers onto younger ones.

You can make an analogy with Y2K, which also had a known deadline. People waited until the eleventh hour before making a plan to keep the lights on. The level of awareness about this problem is modest at best.

Here’s the whole interview.
Thanks to Dana Flanders for the pointer.