Are Graduate Programmes Missing The Mark?
Within the coming months, gaggles of graduates will enter workforces, often for their first time. In 2022, 58,779 Irish university graduates entered the workforce within nine months of their graduation. Graduate opportunities and graduate employment is on the rise across Europe, making this an exciting time for these new employees. Large and small companies alike are currently preparing for this onset of young and exciting talent who will walk through their doors by securing candidates, preparing contracts, choosing the freebies and, crucially, finalising graduate training plans.
Companies across sectors, sizes and countries benefit from hiring graduates. Graduates bring fresh perspective, adaptable mindset and a keen willingness to learn. Graduate recruitment schemes are often cost-effective ways of attracting fresh talent which, through training and development, can acquire the skills, knowledge and values to thrive within the organisation. This allows companies to plan for the long term and reduces the company spend on recruitment and training, as employees are retained over longer periods of time.
One of the most significant costs associated with hiring graduates is the training required to get them up to speed and ready to perform in your organisation. To quote GradIreland, “graduate training programmes ease candidates into the world of work and give them the skills necessary to become part of the larger team”. Graduate training is essential – and very few graduate training programmes are getting it right.
New graduate training for a new generation
In a study of workers in the US and the UK:
42% of entry-level and junior staff reported that they found training “boring and unengaging”
52% of all respondents viewed the training they had received as a “box-ticking” exercise
When speaking to employees who have attended graduate training programmes over the last 3 years, they share reports describing the training they received as “unhelpful and unrelated to the work I actually do on a day-to-day basis”. Another shared the view that “most of the training I was given was a tick the box exercise and added very little practical value”. There was a consensus that training, especially when provided only online, was so unengaging that many graduates spent that time on their phones – not exactly the return on investment that most companies are looking for.
“Most of the training I was given was a tick the box exercise and added very little practical value”
These figures and quotes can lead to the incorrect assumption that members of the Gen Z generation simply have little to no desire to attend learning and development initiatives. Research shows, however, that this is not the case. A 2022 survey from LinkedIn found that:
76% of Gen Z employees wanted more opportunities to acquire new skills
61% wanted greater opportunities to increase their workplace responsibilities
So, the more likely case is that graduates want to learn, but they find current learning and training opportunities unengaging and ineffective. So, the “big prize” question is: How do we design training programmes that harness this desire for learning, teach graduates the skills and qualities they need to succeed in the workplace and provide businesses with employees who are motivated, capable and more likely to stay with the company?
A good place to start is by looking at what is not working. Below, you can see 20 reasons why corporate graduate programmes fail, as shared by Duja Consulting:
How do we do this right?
If this is what graduate programmes should not include, what should they include? And, more importantly, what do organisations want as an outcome of their graduate programmes? The greatest return on investment an organisation can achieve from any graduate programme is for its graduates to work their way up through the company to eventually become successful managers and leaders. However, training graduates how to be leaders from the get-go is a waste of resources, as it is often years before they will need to manage anyone else in the company or apply other leadership skills. A more effective training programme would include skills and qualities that will help graduates perform their more current duties to build confidence in the workplace as well as help them grow a curiosity and appetite for development that they can build on as they progress to eventually become leaders and managers.
For example, in Prism’s Future Fit Leadership Model© (see below), we identified that an effective leader must be comfortable and confident when it comes to inspiring others. A key element of this is capability is the building and maintaining of a feedback culture within their organisation and knowing how to inspire and engage all employees to partake in this practice. In this way, the leader is building a company-wide culture of feedback. Giving effective feedback is not necessarily a skill expected of a graduate at their early entry period, but knowing how to seek and receive feedback is critical to their success. Practical, experiential, and relevant training needs to start here. Understanding how to learn from feedback and to ultimately become comfortable giving feedback, helps the graduate succeed in their role, reinforces a feedback culture and also gives them a foundation upon which to build their leadership practice.
Prism’s Future Fit Leadership Model© outlines four critical competency areas required of Future-Fit Leaders, defined as those leaders who are driving high performance in an increasingly complex context that delivers sustainable value for stakeholders.
Another way to prevent wasted resources in a graduate programme is to ensure the structure and content of the training is based in psychological and business research. For example, in one survey 33% of employees report forgetting their training less than one month after completing the programme. Applying psychological insights such as Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve, which explains the decline in the amount of information a person retains after it was first learned as time goes on, to structure training programmes can increase their efficacy. Using multimodal delivery channels (e.g. mix of online, in person, self-directed and team oriented), harnessing technology, focusing on effective interpersonal communication and structuring content cadence to maximise learnings/retention come together to ensure graduates take away as much as possible from their training, thereby reducing the resources companies waste on ineffective and ill-targeted training.
Where do we go from here?
It is exceptionally useful for companies to take a healthy review of their graduate training programmes and see the opportunities to maximise the potential of this new, youthful cohort of employees entering their (physical or remote) offices. Reviewing your company’s graduate training scheme through the lens of this research can reduce wasted money and time spend, improve graduate upskilling, enhance graduate retention, contribute to stronger workplace relationships, reduce mistakes and foster future leaders – getting much closer to the mark for both companies and graduates.
For companies looking to partner with learning and development experts specialising in graduate training programmes, Prism has developed 2 bespoke graduate programme offerings. The first is a single company offering for larger businesses with a substantial graduate class looking for a custom and adaptable training programme for their specific needs. The second is a consortium for small and medium enterprises who seek an affordable training option for a smaller number of graduates. We have built on our understanding of the graduate landscape and the organisational challenges in training and developing graduates to create programmes to meet the needs facing businesses today.
As specialists in this key development area, we are here to help and offer any support and advice you may need, so feel free to contact us for an insightful conversation.
