Should graduates be trained together or separately?
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One thing we find consistently when working with clients to develop their graduate programmes is that the focus is almost exclusively on training graduates together as a group, from welcome events and inductions to role specific training.
The rational is that this enables graduates to develop a strong network across the organisation, helps them stay free of departmental “silos”, and adds value as they understand what’s going on in other areas of the business.
However, this approach to training has some significant downsides.
One negative trend we’ve seen across group-focused graduate programmes is the reinforcement of a “student culture”. This is usually typified by the graduates devaluing their training and giving preference to things like socialising late at night – which results in “alarms not going off” in the morning or even people falling asleep during training!
Secondly, within these training groups there are often no professional role models in how to approach development opportunities. The only standards they have are those of their trainers – who are often cast into the role of teachers or lecturers – and their peers. This reinforces the “student culture”. It also means that the networks that graduates develop are heavily weighted to other graduates and based on peer chat. They don’t learn to form connections with people with different backgrounds and levels of experience across the wider business.
Lastly, whilst it may seem cost effective to deliver training to the entire graduate pool, the reality is that much of the training will only have relevance to a percentage of the audience at any one time – those who have an immediate job need to apply the learning. Training people who don’t have an immediate opportunity to apply the learning is not only inefficient, it can create a learning environment which is prone to distraction/disruption. It can give an early impression that the training – and consequently the organisation as a whole – is ‘fluffy’ or irrelevant.
That said, it’s obvious that it would be hard to make the case for running an individual training session for each and every graduate, especially where the content is equally relevant to each participant. So the answer is a balanced mix of training. Here are some tips to help you refine your graduate programmes to get the best outcome for both your participants and your wider business.
- Start by identifying the competencies you are trying to develop in your graduates – as individuals, within specific departments and across the entire organisation. What changes are you working to make, in graduates and in the organisation?
- Highlight the topics where there is a common issue specific to your intake of graduates – for example, understanding the behaviours of the graduates who gained the best reputation during their scheme; or learning to manage ambiguity – commonly a problem with graduates direct from university. Usually these will form the core of your group sessions.
- Work out where the required competencies overlap with those you need to develop in the general population or across a graduate’s wider team. Often these are best served by group sessions which are attended by both graduate and non-graduate team members who need to develop those specific skills.
- Lastly, identify learning needs which are unique to small groups of graduates or individuals. There are likely to be significantly fewer of these, and you can explore developing more individual focused training formats to tackle them.
It may be administratively simple to train all your graduates together. But this will perpetuate a student culture, and result in less behaviour change. Instead, work out what shifts you want to make. Tackle common needs together; and give access to menu training alongside the professionals you want them to become. This will ensure that training is always timely, relevant – and more highly regarded.