When experienced government employees retire, they take decades of institutional knowledge with them. How to build a succession plan before the wave hits.
Article Highlights
- Institutional Knowledge Loss: The Retirement Risk Nobody Documents Until It's Gone
- Building a Succession Pipeline: Identifying, Developing, and Preparing Your Next Generation
- Hiring the Next Generation: Competing for Younger Workers
- A Succession Planning Checklist for Government Agencies Facing the Retirement Wave
- Fill Predicted Retirement Succession Gaps in Government Before They Become a Reality
Most government agencies know a wave of retirements is coming, and many don't have a plan. When experienced employees leave, they take decades of knowledge too.
Nearly half of public sector employers say the biggest wave of retirements is still ahead. NEOGOV's own research backs that up, stating that 69% of agencies anticipate more than 5% of their workforce will retire in the next five years.
Yet 61% of agencies have no formal succession planning process in place, and only 14% are prioritizing succession planning in 2026. The crux of retirement succession gaps in government is that agencies can see the wave coming, but most aren't building a plan to meet it.
The timing makes it worse. Government jobs have fallen from about 15% of the labor market in 2009 to 13% today, and quarterly vacancies have regularly topped 800,000 since 2021. The retirement wave will deepen these gaps while your agency is already struggling to fill positions.
And the pipeline behind it is thin: only 8% of government employees are under age 30, so retirement succession gaps in government aren't just about losing headcount. When employees leave after 20 or 30 years, they take institutional knowledge, community relationships, undocumented processes, and the practical understanding of how things actually get done.
In this post, we'll discuss how to plan for retirement succession gaps in government before they actually hit. For more on the broader pressures agencies are facing, see our public sector HR trends 2026 report.
Institutional Knowledge Loss: The Retirement Risk Nobody Documents Until It's Gone
The most expensive consequence of retirement succession gaps is the knowledge that walks out the door with the employee.
Long-tenured government employees hold knowledge that has not been recorded in writing:
- How budget processes actually work, beyond what the policy says
- Which community stakeholders to call for specific issues
- The historical context for why certain processes exist
- The workarounds and informal procedures that keep operations running
- Relationships with vendors, partner agencies, and elected officials
When this knowledge leaves, remaining staff scramble to understand responsibilities, replicate processes, and replace lost productivity. In some cases, agencies bring back retirees as consultants simply to keep operations functioning, which is the opposite of succession planning.
This isn't a rare failure mode. In NEOGOV's 2026 HR trends report, 27% of surveyed agencies said they have no clear process for knowledge transfer when an employee leaves, and among those that do, many rely on exit interviews or informal documentation rather than structured cross-training or mentorship.
Your agency's policies, procedures, and training should capture this knowledge before the employee retires. If institutional knowledge only exists in someone's memory, it's not institutional knowledge. It's individual knowledge with an expiration date.
Building a Succession Pipeline: Identifying, Developing, and Preparing Your Next Generation
Succession planning in government is more than identifying a backup for every position. It's building the capability across your workforce so transitions don't create operational gaps.
Identify Which Positions Carry the Highest Risk
Not every retirement creates a succession gap. Focus on positions where the knowledge, relationships, or decision-making authority would be hardest to replace. Map retirement eligibility across your agency by department, by role, and by timeline (within one year, two to three years, five years), and identify the positions where succession risk is highest.
Develop Internal Candidates Through Targeted Training
Set development goals for internal candidates tied to the information they'll need, and identify gap-closing strategies including training, mentoring, coaching, and stretch assignments. This has to go beyond compliance training. Your agency needs a system that tracks which employees are actually developing the skills needed for higher-level roles.
NEOGOV's research found 61% of agencies offer virtual training and 56% offer in-person training. But only 33% offer mentoring, 28% offer job shadowing, and 17% of public sector agencies report offering no development opportunities at all. Connect training assignments to development goals so employee growth is documented, tracked, and aligned to succession needs.
Document Institutional Knowledge
Knowledge transfer should begin 12 to 18 months before an anticipated retirement, not in the final two weeks. Create a structured process in which retiring employees document key processes, relationships, contacts, and institutional context, and store that documentation in a centralized system where successors and new hires can search and access it.
Hiring the Next Generation: Competing for Younger Workers
Even the best internal succession plan can't fill every gap from within. Your agency needs to attract a new generation of government employees to replace the ones retiring.
Millennials and Gen Z have different work expectations. They value work/life balance, career development, mission-driven work, and modern technology. Long government hiring timelines are especially damaging with younger candidates, who expect faster, more transparent processes and have more options than previous generations of applicants.
Your agency needs recruiting tools that reach candidates already interested in public service and move them through the process before they accept a private-sector offer. For practical tactics, see 7 government recruiting tips.
A Succession Planning Checklist for Government Agencies Facing the Retirement Wave
The retirement wave isn't a surprise. It's been in the pipeline for years. The agencies that come through it successfully will be the ones that prepare now.
- Map retirement eligibility across your agency. Identify which positions will be vacated in the next one, three, and five years, and flag the roles where institutional knowledge, community relationships, or decision-making authority would be hardest to replace. Use performance reporting to build this picture.
- Start knowledge transfer 12 to 18 months before anticipated retirements. Document processes, relationships, contacts, and institutional context, and pair retiring employees with their successors for mentorship during the transition period.
- Build development plans for identified successors. Set development goals tied to the competencies the successor needs, and assign targeted training aligned to those goals. Track progress so succession readiness is visible to leadership, not assumed.
- Shorten your hiring timelines for replacement positions. Don't wait until the employee retires to post the position. If you know a retirement is coming in six months, start building the pipeline now and automate recruiting and candidate screening so you can make offers faster.
- Connect your systems so transitions don't create data gaps. When you manage your workforce needs in separate systems, every transition involves manual re-entry and lost context. That’s why NEOGOV was designed specifically for the public sector to centralize all of your human capital management needs in one platform.
Fill Predicted Retirement Succession Gaps in Government Before They Become a Reality
Retirement succession gaps in government don't close themselves, and waiting for the wave to hit before building a plan only guarantees the knowledge loss, service disruption, and scramble hiring that succession planning is meant to prevent.
For more actionable workforce planning strategies, download our full report on the Top 5 Public Sector HR Trends of 2026.
