Integrating the next generation of employees

THE CHALLENGE

The company was relocating and expanding rapidly. There was an urgent need to build a new customer services team, so recent graduates were recruited who were bright and motivated, but had little work experience. As “millennials”, they had a very different approach to learning compared to existing employees.

THE RESULT

The on-boarding programme developed specifically for millennials gave the new team the attitude, knowledge and behaviours they needed to rapidly become productive in their new roles.

Our Approach

We adopted a structured, top-down approach to identify what knowledge and skills are directly related to the business outcomes and service functions. These were used to create a full-time programme of training and work experience, aligned to the learning style of young adults. The programme also included preparing the technical trainers to deliver their subject matter in a way that was most effective for this particular audience.

• Through interviews with managers, we identified core skills and knowledge that makes a direct impact on service delivery to ensure the on-boarding programme made the new recruits productive in the shortest possible timescale
• A seven-week full-time programme was designed to incorporate skills training, product knowledge and commercial context.
• Training methods were highly interactive and ensured students had hands-on experience in practical applications from the earliest stage
• We helped their line managers understand and utilise the millennial mind-set to fulfil the organisation’s objectives.
• The programme made full use of the millennials’ natural attributes of being highly collaborative, quick to pick up new ideas and a desire for autonomy in a supportive environment.

Outcomes

Often, on-boarding programmes have a high drop-out rate due to poor selection or incompatible training. This programme, designed with a focus on business outcome and aligned to the millennials’ learning style was highly successful with a very low drop-out rate and a very quick transition to full-time service delivery roles after training.

• The team had a high morale and were very motivated to deliver excellent customer service
• They had the knowledge and skills to do their job, and also understood the business context for their customers which lead to greater customer satisfaction levels.
• The team were so successful that within a short time, some were being promoted into more demanding positions that would normally have taken many months to build up to.
• This gave the company the confidence to continue with a strategy of recruiting millennials for what had previously been challenging positions to fill.