In less than a decade, one of your most valuable business assets will walk out the door - the expertise your senior technicians have gained over the past few decades.
For field service companies, expertise is your competitive advantage. It's what your customers pay for, why they choose you over competitors and what keeps them coming back.
Unfortunately, that expertise is about to vanish on an unprecedented scale.
Four million Baby Boomers retired in 2024—a 2X increase from the year before. They don’t call it the Silver Tsunami for nothing—at the current rate, this entire workforce will turn over in less than a decade. Among them are the field technicians and skilled workers carrying decades of irreplaceable knowledge.
These veteran technicians don't just fix machines—they understand their idiosyncrasies, histories and the countless undocumented modifications made over decades of service. That kind of knowledge isn't in any manual, and you can't replace it with a junior hire or a training video.
Beyond technical expertise, they carry invaluable tribal knowledge—unwritten rules, organizational relationships, and workflows refined over decades.
Many of these businesses have been passed down through generations, so these experts also preserve and protect decades of family legacy.
When the Silver Tsunami arrives, the field service industry will be hit especially hard because experienced technicians are the backbone of these businesses. This isn't just evolution—it's extinction-level change for businesses that aren't prepared.
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- 4M Boomers retired in 2024—twice as many as the year before. At this rate, the entire workforce will turnover in less than a decade.
- 57% Of Baby Boomers have shared less than half of what they know with the next generation
- $3K Lost per worker every year due to missing knowledge. For a 50-person company, that’s $150,000 down the drain—longer jobs, misdiagnosed problems, and fixing the same issue twice.
