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Seven tactics to engage young SA employees

Engaged employees perform better and are more likely to grow and develop with your organisation. Ruwayne Kock and Dr. Kent McNamara conducted research to determine the current levels of employee engagement within South African organisations. The findings form part of a pilot employee engagement survey conducted by The Human Resource Practice. In this article, they share seven practical ways of helping you to engage young graduates within your organisation.

by Ruwayne Kock and Dr. Kent McNamara

Most organisations will be placing young graduates on development/internship programmes in their organisations at the beginning of 2010. These development programmes require huge financial investments which must provide a significant return on expectation, i.e. feeding the talent pipeline.

A recent employee engagement survey has found that 31% of South African employees younger than 30 years were disengaged from their jobs and undecided on their connection to their job and organisation. In addition, respondents who frequently thought of quitting their jobs were mainly young African employees under the age of 30. The survey also revealed that managers played a very small role, if any, in positively influencing job engagement.

Young employees seek personal fulfilment

Our research indicated that young employees are going beyond conventional notions of organisation engagement by putting personal fulfilment ahead of company needs.

Interestingly, supervisors and managers ranked the lowest for factors influencing employee engagement. Managers can and should influence the extent to which young employees connect to their jobs and the organisation. Our research illustrated that young employees require a shift from an organisation-focused approach to a more individual-based people management approach. Managers therefore need to change the way they engage their people to a coaching management style. This presents an empowering relationship that facilitates the creation of meaningful, challenging work which tests people’s resourcefulness.

Seven tactics to engage young graduates

Against the backdrop of the current economic climate and in context of limitations on job mobility, young employees have been pressured to look for greater meaning in their work and ways to be more resourceful. Based on our research and experience in the learning and development field, the following seven tactics will help you to engage young graduates in your organisation:

1. Develop a meaningful, structured development programme that will challenge these graduate recruits at emotional, intellectual and physical levels.
2. Build personal change resilience to assist graduate recruits to cope in today’s complex organisational environment and resourcefulness to provide the recruits with the confidence and initiative to perform in these difficult times.
3. Conduct career conversations with graduate recruits to establish aspirations and possible career paths.
4. Assign both mentor and coach to each graduate or group of graduate recruits. The coach needs to be responsible for functional (job) development aspects, while the executive mentor helps them with the personal and organisational aspects of their careers.
5. Build capacity with line managers on how they should manage these young recruits.
6. Involve graduate recruits in select senior management conferences, events and projects.
7. Monitor progress and provide regular feedback to graduate recruits.

Employee engagement is critical, as engaged employees perform well and are more likely to prolong retention within an organisation.

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