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Working and ageing
218 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

employees with critical skills ready to become mentors, identifying
situations conducive to effective transfer, drawing up an action plan, setting
individuals in motion, providing support, creating a secure environment
conducive to transfer;
(d) implementing transfer and assessing knowledge gained: monitoring the
transfer process to identify issues and help put together relevant
responses, measuring impacts: skills gained, pathways, organisational
changes;
(e) formally instituting best practices: officially identifying the critical know-
how passed on, and capitalising on the said know-how and the processes
by which transfer is to take place.
Three people served as mentors at the granule mining company: an older
worker aged 61, with 35 yearsʼ service; a 45-year old employee with 25 years
on the job; and a young operations manager, who had already built up
significant experience. Six newly recruited staff members were able to benefit
from the transfer initiative.
The know-how identification stage was described as being particularly
important. The process undertaken with management and older employees
helped bring to light the experience-based know-how in the job (four types of
strategic know-how were identified, giving rise to implementation of four
transfer initiatives) and, more broadly speaking, the skills gained over the
years, their nature and their value for the company: machine setting, tips and
pointers for working safely, communicating information in a noisy environment,
etc. Altogether, these focus areas showed all those involved that they were in
fact employed in full-fledged professions.

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Key success factors ( )
Success factors related to the training process are:
(a) identify, with experienced workers, critical work situations that put
experiential knowledge to work, and appear conducive to learning;
(b) ensure that the skills to be gained are actually experience-based and that
they can only be learned on the job;
(c) mobilise all internal transfer players: experienced worker(s), learner(s),
work team(s), manager(s);
(d) jointly draw up an action plan that identifies critical work situations, plans
out work periods and time between employees, the resources and

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( ) The granule mining company example, along with other examples in the industry, see Caser and
Conjard, 2009.