A few weeks ago, the professional services firm KPMG UK surveyed over 400 students on their perceptions about future employment. The somewhat surprising (and heartening) findings include the news that:
…the quality of training and development on offer ranked as the most important criterion in a prospective employer for 43 percent of students, well ahead of job security (28 percent) and salary (11 percent).
“This would indicate,” KPMG deduces, “that students are thinking more now about their long-term careers, and recognise that training and development is fundamental to attaining the portable skills which could help them in the medium to long-term.”
KPMG’s Head of Recruitment notes:
It is striking that students rate training and development as more important than job security or even salary. Clearly the recession is making them think about their long-term prospects, not just their first job. Employers need to take account of this—the economic downturn could have caused a long-lasting shift in student attitudes.
If this turns out to be a trend, is there a corresponding shift in attitudes by employers? Are we prepared to respond to young workers who want to be developed for the long term? If so, there may be an opportunity for companies to build long range relationships with young workers who are eager to learn and grow and take their place in the working community.
So, here’s the to 43 percent…the modest young who stand ready to entrust themselves to our care because they know they have a lot to learn….
Let’s not let them down, shall we?
(By the way, it’s a pleasure to welcome InsideWork’s dynamic summer interns Kristie and Michael, whose fingerprints are already showing up significantly in our workflow: Welcome you guys! Thanks for joining the team.)
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Actually, some of this research started showing up at least 15 years ago. What’s fascinating is to compare what workers want (recognition, development, being part of a larger whole) with what their managers think they want (money).
Two years ago, my team took control of a meeting away from a consultant and focused on the importance of professional development and what development activities they actually wanted to do. The consultant was shocked.
Good point, Glynn. You’ve made explicit something I hinted at last fall in a post called Great Expectations.
I would really like to know more about why and how your team hijacked that meeting a couple of years ago — and what came of it…
We’d been working for two months with an organizational consultant — helping us build a team that was being pulled together from a number of disparate functions and different areas. And the team kept growing all through the process, so we had to keep "re-enrolling" people.
About three months into the process, we had a two-hour team meeting to discuss three items, one of which was professional development and the first item on the agenda. After an hour, the consultant decided to move to agenda item #2. But no one was ready to stop the discussion on development — because this kind of discussion had never happened before — how to connect your individual development, and the team’s development, to the company’s larger goals.
He tried to move to item #2 twice, and then the team collectively told him to junk the agenda because they were spending the rest of the time on this subject. I laughed out loud — not because the consultant was discomfited (and he was) but because I realized that this was the moment when the team had become a team. They’d decided they owned their future.
I actually did a presentation on this at a national conference some 18 months later, entitled "From Misfits to Heroes." All of those disparate, miscellaneous functions had turned themselves into a highly coordinated, high-performance work team.
Nice, Glynn: “…I realized that this was the moment when the team had become a team. They’d decided they owned their future.” The crazy thing — and I admit I’m reading between the lines here — the crazy thing is I bet the company benefited in productivity and retention from your little rebellion. Yes?
Absolutely. Creativity and innovation soared, gaining all kinds of internal and external recognition. Significant changes were made in our corporate web site, intranet, online research, issues management and social media. They blew the doors off the barn.