How ASA Members Are Harnessing Key Knowledge from a Retiring Generation

One of the key takeaways from the American Supply Association’s LEAD strategic planning retreat earlier this year in Dana Point, California was the question of how is the PHCP-PVF industry addressing the top-of-mind subject of the transfer of industry knowledge from retiring veterans to the next generation?

As an objective of both ASA’s Operational Excellence and Embracing the Future strategic councils coming out of that planning retreat, ASA’s Business Intelligence Unit commissioned a recent survey of association membership, tackling that specific, critical question.

The response to the survey was as plentiful as any Quarterly Market Survey the BI unit has tackled with nearly 100 individuals from ASA-member companies taking the survey, ranking only behind the monster bath-and-kitchen query in 2024 that required results to be broken into three parts due to a high volume of responses.

A departure from the usually lengthier QMS offerings, this survey on industry knowledge transfer was direct and to the point with four main questions, two of which were designed to trigger percentage responses and two others designed for long-form answers.

On the somewhat concerning side, 86 percent of respondents to the survey say they do not have a program in place to transfer industry knowledge to the next generation of their company.

That led into the next question — playing into that 14 percent affirmative response — what strategies/tools is your company using to harness today’s tribal knowledge so it will be available to that next generation? Respondents were then asked the best way to document/share that knowledge.

Responses were extremely varied, ranging from sharing documents/notes, management development programs, longer onboarding processes with a veteran mentor involved to the use of video technology and all points between.

“We have been recording training videos for our internal program,” one respondent said. “We also require in-person office staff so this knowledge can be passed down. Even so, it’s a challenging problem.”

“We do biweekly trainings for the overall knowledge,” another survey respondent wrote. “We have implemented a CRM for the customer-level tribal knowledge and we have a constant bullpen of salespeople. We have two to four junior outside salespeople at any time who are tasked with learning the industry prior to fully hitting the field.”

Another respondent also emphasized cross training is “the best way I know and witnessing how the relationships they have with the customer flows, the things that are communicated and how they prefer to be engaged with (joking nature, know their family, personality types, etc.),” the respondent explained. “The product knowledge is only part of it. The customer will tell you what they need if they know you care about getting them taken care of. I think if there is any importance of knowledge transfer it’s simply where do you go or who do you get pricing/technical info for a specific product. The value in transfer from retiring to the new guy, in my opinion, is the relational trust. Be relatable and be attentive like the older guys are.”

One individual noted their company posts protocols for certain activities and also are posting sales records in a logical way on a server so younger employees can easily access history.

Another industry company is hard at work on a comprehensive knowledge transfer protocol.

“We are working on creating learning materials with the knowledge of our seasoned employees,” this individual said. “The current plan is to sit with employees and ask questions, shadow their processes and document as much as possible. Once these interviews are complete, the plan will then be to consolidate this information into one platform. Our HRIS system has an LMS that we can embed content into, so we want to utilize it as much as possible. This will allow us to share the content with all employees, update as needed, and assign training from the content where appropriate.”

As expected, the topic of artificial intelligence came up multiple times in survey responses.

“I wonder if we could use AI to capture that information?” one respondent asked. “You could have staff input their knowledge into Chat GPT and organize it. You could even build out a bot to follow said person’s work throughout the day and capture what they know?”

And this from another survey respondent: “We are working to embed training in our LMS that will help with this. We are starting to work on mentoring programs that can help with the transfer of knowledge — leveraging AI tools that help speed up an employee’s ability to find information and accurately provide what the customer needs. The last subject is really a way to circumvent the need to download tribal knowledge and assumes that AI tools have the information.”

Keeping retiring employees engaged
They survey also asked ASA-member companies if they offer part-time and/or consulting opportunities to retiring employees as a way to help bridge/lessen that knowledge-transfer gap. Sixty-four percent (2 out of 3) of respondents say they do offer some sort of part-time/consulting opportunities for retiring employees.

“It helps bridge the learning gap,” one survey respondent wrote. “It helps the retiree prepare for retirement and allows us time to share their knowledge.”

“We would like to keep the door open for our employees that retire,” another noted. “They have so much knowledge that must be shared.”

And finally, ASA members were asked how big of a problem the knowledge transfer gap is and how quickly could it worsen.

“It might not be a big problem today, but it will be in the near future,” a respondent said. “It’s something we need to think about now and prepare for.”

Another respondent posed an interesting theory. “It may be a problem for some, but we forget the customers,” this individual noted. “Knowledgeable customers are retiring and the next generation replacing them may not be as knowledgeable/trained either, so it may be an even bigger problem. At our roundtable discussion at ASA Central we talked about knowledge transfer, and some felt it wasn’t a problem due to things in our industry changing so much we just need to train for the now and not the past.”

To get a copy of the 19-page report, contact ASA’s Bri Baresel at bbaresel@asa.net.