Today’s Morning Buzz is by Kayla Barber-Perrotta, the Deputy City Manager for the City of Albany, Ore. Connect with Kayla on LinkedIn.
- What I’m eating: Ghost pepper beef jerky
- What I’m watching: Agenda management demo recordings
- What I’m working on: Post-ICMA conference catch-up
We’ve all been hearing about the “silver tsunami” for years. Seriously, it’s been imminent at least three times in my career. Well, in Albany, that wave has officially
arrived. Over the next two years, a quarter of our workforce will become eligible for retirement (most in this current year). And these aren’t just any employees, these are
employees with 20+ years of experience at the City, who built our systems and processes, and who maintain critical knowledge for our operations.
It’s a scary figure to face. Turnover like this has tremendous potential to derail any organization, but it is also a once-in-a-generation chance to rethink how Albany
structures its teams and positions for the future.
Turning a Tsunami into a Strategy
Like many organizations, the City of Albany has faced limited capacity to plan ahead. Significant funding challenges mean many teams are treading water just to deliver the
services needed in this moment, never mind finding the capacity to strategize. So when the impending retirement wave landed during budget reviews this year, it was already at
a head. Very few teams had been able to plan, document, or otherwise prepare, and were requesting expensive additional staff or months of overlap for training. We couldn’t
just ignore those pain points or services would be dramatically impacted, but we also absolutely could not afford what was in front of us.
We quickly set a new goal: find ways to mitigate the service and organizational disruptions of retirement without compromising Council’s existing strategic initiatives
and do it in a tight budget environment. It was about as easy as you would expect. Budget review conversations gave us a ready forum to discuss strategy and begin
triaging.
We worked to identify departments that were drowning, and most at risk of going under, so we could prioritize limited personnel additions in those areas. At the same time, we
began to identify the full range of barriers that had thus far prevented knowledge. In addition to a time and capacity issue, we also identified gaps in available tools, and what was often a very short notice period for retirements.
Incentivizing Notice and Transferring Knowledge
Rather than waiting for the retirements to roll in, we began looking for ways to address the notice issue. Oregon’s PERS, our state retirement system, allows employees to work back while drawing their pension. We saw a win-win opportunity and built an incentive program to stretch notice and give us more time to build transition plans and execute them.
If employees give us 90 days’ notice of their retirement date, we offered to continue our medical insurance coverage during their work-back period up to one year. In return, the city would use that window to:
- Develop a transition plan,
- Review and document critical processes, and
- Assess the position itself—is this a straight refill or a chance to redesign for the
next decade?
This approach addresses a real concern for employees—health coverage costs—while giving us time to train, plan, and strategically right-fill positions. As a parameter, we have also made it clear hiring someone new and doing overlap will not be the norm and only allowed in very specific situations where no other options can be identified. This has allowed the program to be budget neutral, which is always a bonus. Instead, if an employee plans to work back for four months, with their 90 days of notice, we get seven months to prepare, and by building a transition plan at the top of that seven months, we have the ability to build transition milestones.
Leveraging Technology and Tools
We’ve also been using technology and process improvement tools to capture institutional knowledge and identify areas for improvement. New software tools, along with better utilization of tools we were already paying for, such as Teams, have started to make knowledge capture and collaboration easier. While many may jump to throwing more and more technology at the problem, budget realities mean we can only add a few tools at a time. We’ve had to be strategic about understanding and prioritizing based on projected return-on-investment. These limits have also allowed us to apply pressure to processes themselves. Broken processes don’t magically fix themselves with shiny new software.
To this end, we’ve rolled out process mapping and storyboarding to help teams visualize workflows and spot pain points while new templates and tutorials for standard operating procedures (SOPs) make documentation consistent and accessible. Next, we’ll be designing emerging leaders/process improvement training to further address this pain point, ensuring knowledge transfer and innovation become embedded in our culture.
Beyond “Same for Same”
We’re also building a culture that questions traditional, “this is the way we’ve always done it,” thinking. Every vacancy (retirement or other) now triggers a conversation:
- “If we were designing this position for the next 10 years, what would it look like?”
- “What pain points were present in this position?”
- “What worked really well?”
- “Is there a way either through this position alone or in combination with others to make our next era of service delivery better?”
The goal is to right-fit our organization by aligning positions with emerging needs, new technologies, and cross-departmental collaboration. Instead of scrambling to replace, we’re taking a breath to rebuild smarter and learn from the past. Already we have reworked the future staffing plan for our Parks and Recreation Department, an area hit particularly hard by retirements, to address knowledge gaps and adjust for changing needs. Our Utility Billing team recently moved from Public Works to Finance to give them greater support and collaboration while addressing a workload issue in Public
Works. Others are under discussion as we continue to review our needs.
So what are the takeaways?
The silver tsunami is real, but it doesn’t have to be a crisis. By combining proactive planning, smart incentives, and thoughtful redesign, we’re turning what could be a disruptive wave of retirements into an opportunity to modernize, right-fit, and strengthen our organization.
We’re learning that it’s not just about filling each individual vacancy. It is about understanding how all our duties work together and how we can strengthen each other and our mission. It’s about capturing knowledge, improving processes, and designing teams that can thrive for the next decade. Technology, training, and intentional transition planning give us the tools to do that, but it’s the people that make it possible.
Change is uncomfortable, but it’s also a chance to celebrate the legacy of longtime employees while empowering the next generation of leaders. Our work isn’t done, and the wave is just beginning, but by taking it head-on, Albany is turning reactive transition into proactive transformation.