Share Your Knowledge & Experience
You can positively benefit the younger generation through sharing your expertise, knowledge and experience with them, with long – lasting positive effects on the future success of your workforce. As a professional in your line of work, you will have been blessed with experience and an opportunity to learn. You can pay it forward by sharing your experience with the younger generation.
Act as a mentor for the younger workers in your workforce. This is something they will appreciate, as it can be a daunting & big step moving in to the world of work. Sometimes they will need a helping hand, just like everyone else will have done at some point. Provide these young employees with exposure to situations like decision – making processes, project management and any relevant training sessions. By investing your time into the younger generation, you are demonstrating a passion and care for developing young workers.
Provide Workplace Experience
There are numerous benefits to providing workplace experience for young people. This experience can act as a vital learning curve for them. Allowing them to gain skills such as putting their academic knowledge into positive use in a real – life workplace setting, whilst developing essential skills in a professional setting.
This can help make a younger person have more attractive future job prospects. They will also be keen to learn (not that more experienced people aren’t!), but they will be grateful for their opportunity and therefore extremely open to learning anything from that employer that they can. They will bring fresh ideas and a new way of thinking to your team. In addition, they can bring a fresh enthusiasm to the office as well, with benefits such as improved team work and workplace morale. You can support the long – term future of your business by supporting the younger generation in their career journey.
Positive Workplace Attitude
Help create a dynamic attitude within your workplace and freshen up your ideas – there’s no harm in doing that! One sometimes overlooked benefit is that you are planning for the future by hiring young people. If you, as an employer, provides a young person the opportunity, this young person will have a sense of loyalty toward you and your organisation. They will be more inclined to work harder, to prove themselves and, ultimately, help your organisation succeed. These are people you will want to have in your business.
Furthermore, if you provide a clear career pathway for young workers, then this can act as a selling point to future job candidates. For example, if someone is considering between your company and another company then you may stand out here if you actively demonstrate a clear career pathway for younger workers. It is important to consider the long – term aspects as well as the short to medium term.
How We Help
Here, at The HR Booth, we always aim to actively support the younger generation. We believe in developing our younger generation as this will benefit us further down the line. Numerous members of the team have started out as apprentice employees, including our very own CEO & Founder Alistair! Recently we had a member of the Career Ready programme, Abby, work with us for four weeks. This experience allowed her to gain valuable working experience in an office setting. We were delighted to have Abby with us for these four weeks and Alistair will continue to mentor her through the Career Ready programme.
A member of our marketing department, Rennie, is also completing an apprenticeship as part of his job role. This apprenticeship is in Digital Marketing and directly relates to the work he carries out on a daily basis. We believe that by trusting the younger generation, we are directly benefiting the future for ourselves.
Help People Develop
Leadership development is key to creating the leaders of tomorrow. You can help equip the younger generation with skills & knowledge of how leaders act, the techniques they use and their thought – process behind making important decisions. Critical thinking and strategic planning are key aspects of leadership that are only really possible to learn about through experience.
Therefore, it is up to you, as an employer, to provide that experience. We’re not saying that you should invite a new, young employee into an important business meeting, but let them in on your decision making thought process and how you came to that decision. This may take only five minutes but can be a lifetime of advice and knowledge for the young employee. If you are unsure on how to implement this into your working process, then we are happy to help through the form of management training. Click here to find out more.
Be A Mentor
You can take an opportunity to mentor a young person through their career and aim to help them as much as you can through the early stages of their career. Aim to develop a positive working relationship with them and help them navigate the world of work. You can build interpersonal skills as well as improved communication, which is a vital tool to have for future management.
Looking at this from the mentors’ point of view, you can feel a sense of job satisfaction when you see a younger person flourish under your mentorship. Furthermore, this will also provide the opportunity for self – reflection on themselves. By helping a younger employee grow and develop, you are not only supporting their career journey, but you are also developing your own knowledge and skill set too, as you are opening yourself up to a new way of learning and new ideas.
A Rewarding Experience
This can also be a rewarding experience for you, as an employer and / or mentor, as well. The development of young talent is important, you can take the time to invest your valuable time and resources and watch them grow in experience and confidence. It can almost a satisfying experience, as you both work together to provide the young employee the best working experience they can get. It is likely that you will also get fresh ideas and perspectives from the young generation. They may look at tasks differently to you and this can only be a positive thing, as you look to build their experience but also your own experience, as you learn how to teach and mentor someone else. You may also find that your workforce follow in your footsteps and also try to share their experiences with the young worker. You can set a positive example and watch your workforce also do the same, creating a healthy atmosphere within the workplace.
Check out our blog on how you can lead by example as a leader – click here.
Career Progression Opportunities
Have a clear career progression path in place for your younger workers by actively providing them opportunities. The benefits here are endless with the main one being that employees are likely to stay with your organisation, if they know there are realistic opportunities for promotion.
You may also increase your reputation within your intended job markets and be recognised as an employer who gives young people opportunities. It is likely that people, particularly young people and graduates will be more inclined to work for you if this is the case. Recruitment vacancies will be easier to fill and there will be a higher standard & calibre of applicants. Circling back to offering clear career pathways, what does this involve? This should be ingrained into your culture but having regular training events & offering skill enhancing career opportunities is a great place to start.
You can check out our blog on ‘bridging the gap’ between apprenticeships and higher education – click here.
Variance within your Workforce
Take the opportunity to be inclusive and ensure you have a variance within your workforce. A 20 year old worker is likely to have a different attitude and way of thinking to a 50 year old worker. This is brilliant for development of your business, a variety of personalities in the workplace can bring a whole host of new and different ideas. If all of your team are similar then you may struggle for new ideas and new content. When it comes to the decision – making process, make sure to include them and provide exposure and experience, as this will help with their development.
To summarise, share your experience and knowledge with the younger generation in your workforce, and benefit from the long list of positive effects of your workforce. You can demonstrate a passion for developing the young people of your office / factory by providing exposure to decision – making processes, asking their advice and implementing ideas where possible. The transition from education into the world of work can be daunting at times, especially if they have no previous experience of this. There may be learning curves along the way but the best way to learn is through experience (speaking from experience!). You have full control over your workforce, make your workplace an inclusive one, with clear career progression opportunities. Benefits such as employee loyalty and enhanced reputation will be just two of the many benefits you will experience.
If you ever need any help and / or support with any of the topics within the blog, then please get in touch with us via the contact form at the bottom of this page.
