Unprepared Employees, Onboarding, & Mentorship: Let’s Discuss!

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Right here’s a reasonably broad open thread query for at present: do you are feeling like new staff at your organization or agency are “much less ready” than in earlier years? In case your workplace permits lots of WFH days, how does onboarding look in 2024 — and the way does mentorship look? What issues are working in your organization, and which of them actually, actually aren’t?

There have been a TON of articles about this prior to now 12-16 months. In line with the WSJ (present hyperlink):

The shortcomings run the gamut from common data, together with easy methods to make change at a register, to tender expertise comparable to working with others. Employers are spending extra time and sources looking for candidates and infrequently reducing expectations once they rent. Then they’re spending tens of millions to repair new staff’ lack of primary expertise. 

This sentiment was echoed by a number of responses in the newest Corporette survey,* with some folks commenting issues comparable to:

• Junior associates are woefully unprepared to be skilled. Work ethic has severely modified.
• It looks as if fewer and fewer of our junior staff have any work experiences exterior {of professional} settings or internships and it makes them very out of contact with the actual world.
• The newer hires appear to be much less ready to work with groups.

Clearly one large method that corporations are attempting to deal with that is by forcing staff to return to the workplace… however that tends to be wildly unpopular. Which then begs the query – how has onboarding modified at your organization? How has mentorship modified at your organization? Whether or not you’re a senior supervisor or a brand new employee simply out of faculty, I’d love to listen to your ideas…

What are you guys seeing at your corporations? Do you are feeling like new staff are much less ready than they have been in earlier years? (Or: is that this only a generational factor, and never a “lack of studying”/pandemic factor?) Do you assume that is one thing that higher onboarding and higher mentoring can repair?

* I’m nonetheless reviewing the Corporette survey, however hope to share a number of the information quickly. The winners have been picked again in December, and all have accepted their giftcards — congrats to B, Ok, and Ok!

Inventory photograph by way of Stencil.