Guest Article in Human Resources Manager: Legacy in HR – When Knowledge Retires

Legacy is not only technology

The German trade magazine Human Resources Manager published a guest article by our CEO Matthias Mut on 8 July 2026. The subject: a form of legacy that modernization projects routinely overlook.

When people talk about legacy, most think of old software – an Access database, an unmaintained ERP, a line-of-business application from the nineties. The article argues that two more forms exist alongside it: legacy in processes ("we have always done it this way") and legacy in people's heads. The latter is the riskiest, because it stays invisible until it is gone.

Why this matters now

By 2039, around 13.4 million employees will leave the German labour market. Each of them takes along experience that is documented in no system: which supplier actually delivers when things get tight, why an interface was built exactly this way years ago, which billing exception has always been corrected by hand.

That knowledge is rarely written down – and when it is, it sits in formats nobody can find again. This is precisely where the skills shortage meets the topic of legacy systems: replacing an old application requires not just the code, but an understanding of why it behaves the way it does. We described the same connection in our article on the skills shortage around old technologies.

What the article recommends

The piece outlines a way to secure experience knowledge systematically instead of relying on farewell meetings and luck:

• Structured expert interviews instead of loose handover conversations – along the processes the person actually owned
• AI-supported processing of those conversations into searchable knowledge modules that are findable in daily work
• Anonymization from the start, so personal content never enters systems where it does not belong
• Involve the works council at the beginning, not at the end – knowledge preservation touches performance data and personal rights
• Factor in GDPR and the EU AI Act, because using AI in an HR context comes with documentation obligations

Read the full article

The complete piece is available at Human Resources Manager (in German): Legacy im HR: Wenn Wissen in Rente geht

How we support companies with exactly these topics is outlined on our pages about legacy system modernization and the HR & Human Resources sector. If you want to tackle this in your organization, get in touch.