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Induction and Development
Some graduate recruiters may have no involvement with the induction and development process of their graduate recruits. This section is addressed to those who do.
Everyone accepts the importance of retention, but it is a truth more frequently ignored than observed.
New graduates may leave an employer if they do not receive the training, development, experience that they were promised at the attraction stage.
The increasing cost of recruiting graduates, as procedures have become more sophisticated, have also given employers cause to focus more on retention.
Therefore, a commitment to induction and training programs, and their efficient implementation, improves your chances of retaining your graduates.
Induction
The establishment of appropriate induction methods is important for a number of reasons. This includes the introduction of your new recruits to your organisation’s values, culture and policies in a way that recognises their unique circumstance. For example:
Graduates may come to you with unrealistic aspirations. These may be a result of employers overselling themselves in the recruitment process. It may also be because graduates lack experience and judgement about what is possible and/or commercially realistic. Graduates need to make the difficult change from working as individuals in an academic environment with its series of examination hurdles, to the work environment where more emphasis is placed on the achievement of objectives through teamwork. A significant shift in thinking is required, from a situation where everything is provided for them, to their new working life which requires them to work as part of a team and take more ownership of their own development. Research shows that graduates are looking for attractive career prospects, stimulating and demanding work, appropriate training, congenial colleagues and a supportive manager. They seek opportunities to engage in quality work, they want their achievements to receive high visibility, and they look for the opportunity to make a significant contribution. Your brief is to provide advice on how they can utilise your company’s resources to facilitate their own development and tell them how you expect them to achieve these aims.
An induction should address all these issues and aspirations. Clearly, the involvement of senior management is essential to give the process credibility and to allow authoritative statements of the organisation’s policy and performance expectations, but it should not be a top down, authoritarian process.
It is essential that graduates have this exposure to senior management. But it is also important to involve graduates’ peers in the process. Look to recent graduates and graduate junior managers to get involved in running induction programs.
Graduates should also have an opportunity, through well-planned projects, to be able to research and learn about the organisation for themselves. They may not always present accurate information or insights, but ongoing support and discussion of project results should ensure that they come to the right conclusions.
After an induction, graduates should:
have a clear picture of the policies and practices of the organisation
a strong understanding of the organisations culture, values & purpose understand what is expected of them have clear expectations and understanding of their training and development schedule be aware of their rotation program (if applicable) start to build a network of contacts understand what appropriate next steps are expected of them and any relevant actions required understand where they can find out about the basics to get up and running (i.e. printer set up).
Development
The development of graduates needs to be properly planned and monitored. This demands openness, frankness, and appropriate coaching and advice at various stages.
It is possible, by analysis of individual cases, to distinguish certain key points in a career (for example, the attainment of professional status, partnership, supervisory or management roles, or overseas placements), and it is necessary to monitor individuals’ aspirations and achievements in relation to these key points. Employees should be counselled on their performance in their own, and their employers’ interests.
A key requirement of any graduate development program – whether this is delivered for a group or is highly customised to each individual – is feedback. Ensuring each graduate receives both performance feedback and feedback on competencies required to progress is absolutely essential on a regular basis for performance and engagement.
N.B. It is recommend you contact other member organisations of the AAGE to discover more about different companies’ practices in this area. You can participate in and obtain the annual AAGE Employer Survey to understand the common components of graduate programs, popularity of these with current graduates, typical spend and benchmark your own program against the market to ascertain best practice.
Designing a Graduate Development Program
The overriding principles of any graduate development plan should be:
to develop graduates rapidly by giving them early professional/technical and business responsibility, thus building a launch pad for a future career in your organisation to provide a development package that is of value to individuals in its own right to develop a program and content that aligns to the purpose of your program. For example, if the purpose of your program is to develop future leaders, ensure the program has a heavy leadership focus in its content and activities to provide individuals with a support network and framework, to help facilitate their development and aspirations to ensure the content and topics covered are also aligned with the short and long term vision/strategy of your organisation to align content with your companies learning model (e.g. 70:20:10 learning principles). This way you can discern between the formal development component of the program (10%), the support and feedback component (20%), and the on-the-job skills component (70%).
Whilst many of the necessary building blocks for development may already be in place in your organisation, they should be drawn together in a framework to ensure that your Graduate Development Program provides the best transition between the academic and business worlds.
Why Is a Development Program So Important?
Surveys of graduates early in their careers indicate that many feel their talents are underutilised, they are not sufficiently challenged, or they do not have the opportunity to make a significant contribution to the organisation where they are working. The results of these opinions are fairly predictable, and include low morale, productivity, negative impacts on your ability to attract future quality graduates (negative impacts on your employment brand in the student community) and ultimately, higher turnover rates.
With an increased emphasis on smaller business units, many organisations should be in a good position to respond to this challenge. However, it will require the active participation of both graduates and their supervisors to ensure that every opportunity is taken to achieve a quality development program.
The following checklist should help you facilitate this process. It covers a structure for a Graduate Development Program and includes elements such as first roles, tasks and targets, appraisal, training, professional qualifications, involvement in the business and next roles.
Checklist for your Development Program
The following guidelines have been developed as a checklist for those who are seeking to implement or upgrade a graduate development program.
Induction
Ensure that your graduates receive a comprehensive induction into your organisation.
Graduates from your annual intake should be inducted in groups wherever possible to foster teamwork and to encourage the formation of a support network. Where this is not possible, the graduate should have opportunities to feel connected with the wider graduate community through face-to-face activities or by leveraging technology. Relationships with peers are critical to ongoing engagement. Provide the graduate with an overview of the strategic objectives of your organisation, thus allowing the graduate to view their role in a broader context. Understanding their role in contributing to the wider business strategy is important, especially during the first years of employment when their duties may be transactional and reactive rather than strategic. Where appropriate, it is often useful to provide an overview of a ‘typical career path’ or an understanding of the different positions in the organisation. This of course needs to be tailored to suit your organisation structure. Allow the graduate the opportunity to provide feedback on and/or participate in your recruitment process to assist with improvements in the process. There are valuable insights to be gained and they can be leveraged for future recruiting. Graduates should be exposed to the culture of the organisation and, wherever possible, gain exposure to the senior members of your organisation, even prior to joining. This provides inspiration as well as understanding expected behaviour for leadership progression. If your organisation does not have a formal mentoring process, establish a ‘buddy’ system to ensure that your graduates have an initial support mechanism to facilitate organisational learning. As a rule of thumb, the buddy should be at least one position senior to the graduate, so as to have some experience to draw on. The objectives and process of the Graduate Development Program should be clearly communicated. Expectations need to be clearly managed.
The First Role
If your program involves a graduate rotating through various roles or business units, their first role will act as the initial building block and should be selected as a result of a matching process based on:
the area of the business to which the graduate applied and was accepted the level of academic performance achieved and the performance observed during the recruitment process the views of line managers who observed the graduate during the selection process.
The relationship between the graduate and their initial supervisor is of paramount importance. The earlier in the process that the supervisor and graduate meet, share the job description, and formulate a joint agreed action plan and short to long term career goals or objectives, the better the chance of creating a productive graduate.
The Job Description
The job description should clearly define the area of responsibility for which the graduate will be accountable.
Within the boundaries of the job, the graduate should be made aware of the two levels of contribution:
The first relates to the achievement of definitive tasks on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The second relates to the development of changes that will either improve the way these definitive tasks are achieved or the need to introduce something completely new to the business. In this regard, the graduate should be made to feel comfortable in bringing creativity to the business unit.
Formal Performance Appraisal, Feedback and Help
A formal appraisal system, conducted at regular intervals, needs to be established.
At the start of each appraisal period, the graduate should be provided with a set of objectives to be met. Having set a series of overall objectives, a shorter-term action plan should be developed to assist regular feedback between supervisor and graduate. The frequency of short-term target setting should reduce as the graduate becomes more familiar with the job and its requirements. Ensure supervisors don’t wait for a formal review to discuss performance; feedback should be provided openly and regularly through 1:1 discussions. This ensures the graduate can develop and adapt more swiftly. Graduates should be encouraged to ask questions. If your organisation does not have a mentoring system, the graduate network and/or other colleagues need to be encouraged to assist with guidance in addition to that provided by the supervisor. If that person is independent to the graduate’s manager/supervisor, they can help them to navigate ‘managing up’ and also help resolve any potential or actual issues with their manager.
Training
Formal training should be supported throughout the graduate’s career. Many AAGE members operate on the 70:20:10 learning principle, where 70% of learning is structured on-the-job activities, 20% is exposure to the wider business, and 10% is formal learning (though more formal learning may be essential in some industries).
Wherever possible, training should be individually tailored to the specific circumstances of the graduate, and the graduate should be encouraged to own their own development and progression rather than foster a dependent mentality. Graduates should be encouraged to have direct input into the training they receive and to provide feedback on the quality and content of courses attended. Supervisors and graduates should de-brief following any training session to understand what the graduate learnt and what they want to work on as a result of the session. Your support regarding further external professional training and study (MBA, Masters, CA Program etc.) needs to be clearly explained to graduates with regards to financial support, study leave etc.
Involvement in the Business
Broader business exposure outside the graduate job is an ideal way to reinforce organisational learning and supplement the level of challenge available to graduates in their first few years with your organisation. Assigning a graduate to a project team outside their direct area of employment will facilitate this process.
Next Roles
Graduate could be rotated through a number of roles in their first three to four years or be given different responsibilities within the same area. Graduates should be made clearly aware of the need to achieve pre-determined objectives in the current role, as evidenced by the formal appraisal process. The graduate should be developing broad experience in your organisation during the first few years and have some input into their next role(s).
The overriding focus should be to allow the graduate to obtain the experience required to succeed in more senior roles in the future. To the extent that it is possible for 12 to 24 months in the organisation, a broad career template should be discussed with the graduate that will enable both the graduate and organisation to have a common and shared view of the medium term development path that is likely to be followed and eventually help them transition to a more senior role.
