Help with pet deaths in Victoria

Melbourne’s Lort Smith Animal Hospital has appointed an in-house chaplain to help hundreds of grieving pet owners it sees each year. The hospital treats 85,000 pets a year and 300-400 had to be put down.

“The issue of pet grief is very serious and one we acknowledge,” Lort Smith chief executive Ric Holland says. “Every day staff at the hospital have to deal with people in severe trauma and anxiety.”

“Vets and staff are very good at helping people deal with pet loss but they don’t have the time or specific training to help in times of grief.”

Uniting Church Minister Barbara Allen will counsel bereaved pet owners, organize pet funerals and offer a room for reflection.
5. Crisis of retiring baby boomers

Leading NSW recruitment agency Kelly Services has said that employers will face an impending skills and knowledge crisis as multitudes of baby boomers exit the workforce in coming years.

It is estimated that up to four million baby boomers will retire over the next 10-20 years, marking the largest ever loss of knowledge and skills in the Australian labour market.

Kelly Services says that this will spark a knowledge crisis as baby boomers exit the workforce with decades of corporate knowledge and experience. Organisations will have the huge task of retaining and transferring that knowledge to the younger generations, and will be one of the biggest challenges facing employers in the future.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2004-2005 Multi-purpose Household Survey, those in the labour force aged over 45 comprise 3.7 million of the 9.5 million working population.

Many of those aged over 45 years hold highly skilled and pivotal roles including those in management, teaching and health.

Kelly Services said many organisations in the US have already begun implementing programs to retain and preserve the knowledge of retiring employees, and Australian organisations should follow their lead.

In coming years, there will be a large amount of the workforce leaving for retirement and taking with them, valuable knowledge and industry expertise, particularly in complex jobs created by technology.

Many organisations in the US have recognised that the retirement of this generation could cause a knowledge gap in the workforce and have responded pro-actively by implementing knowledge transfer programs. These programs ensure that relevant information and knowledge gets passed on to the right people in a systematic way. Without the accurate transfer of knowledge and technical information, operations and systems may have to be re-established, costing time and money.

The predicted shift towards phased retirement and project work for some retirees may help to ease the burden of a knowledge and labour shortage. But it won’t diminish the scale of the problem that organisations face. The benefits would far outweigh the costs for Australian organisations in preparing for the retirement of this generation.