Graduates & ‘student culture’

Posted by Anne Hamill

Many organisations are worried that their graduates retain a student culture that can be damaging to their reputations, and the reputation of the scheme as a whole. In this article we apply a creativity technique, Problem Inversion, to see why this might be happening.

The problem of ‘student culture’ is a pervasive one. Some symptoms include; being seen to take long coffee breaks with other graduates, going clubbing every night when brought together, straggling into training the next day looking the worse for wear, terrible body language (in one memorable case falling asleep in training), poor timekeeping, an inappropriate ‘Jack-the-lad’ attitude and comments that go for the laugh, a disrespect for HR and trainers, a general lack of understanding of hierarchical structure, inappropriate emails, contributing to the welcome posts of later intakes by submitting a ‘Best bars in (City)’ article, and failing to ‘fit in’ to hard-working teams under pressure. While this only affects a minority of graduates, it can be a substantial minority and be the aspect of graduate development that causes most headaches!

The technique of Problem Inversion is used to explore problems from a different angle, giving an unusual perspective on the issues that might be involved. It’s a fun technique, and great to use in groups, as it involves a light-hearted brainstorm on solving the opposite problem – in this case, how could we ensure that all graduates persist in a student culture for as long as possible? In effect – how could we make this problem worse!

So how could we ensure that our graduates might all show a student lifestyle and approach?

Well first off, we could make sure that they all reinforce this culture with each other. How could we do this?

• Make it easy for graduates to live in groups together, eg by offering house hunting forums that mean that new graduates live with, and spend all their out of work hours with, other new graduates.
• Make it easier for people to mix within their new graduate peer group, than with people in the rest of the workforce eg via graduate intake-based forums, social media and communications events.
• Ensure that graduates in the previous intake with this problem are invited to mentor people in new intakes – eg via a buddy system that is not selective in who buddies with new graduates.
• Bring them all together for training in a graduate group, rather than training them alongside people well-versed in work culture via normal menu training.

Then we could look at how to send misleading messages to graduates about their status and the new behaviour required.

• Run games during welcome events and induction, that encourage students to let loose and compete and act out larger than life personalities, and laugh and applaud this.
• Have the CEO tell graduates that they are the highly selected ‘creme de la creme’ and very important to the organisation as its future senior leaders.
• Initiate large, noisy social events in the evenings of induction, so that this is seen as ‘the norm’.
• Ask graduates to rate induction in a way that sets them up as consumers and judges of its entertainment value, and doesn’t make them accountable for their own contribution.

Then we could also create a feedback vacuum – by not alerting new intakes to a potential problem, and not nipping any problems in the bud.

• Avoid exploring the notion of culture, how student culture differs from work culture, and how actions seen as ‘student behaviour’ can impact negatively on reputation – before they start breaking the unwritten rules.
• Fail to establish the role of every graduate as an ambassador for the scheme and whether it continues to get funding – and don’t share how much the organisation invests in them either!
• Avoid establishing up front that work rules of punctuality etc apply in training; instead, expect them to learn by absorbing your slight irritation when people don’t turn up.
• Avoid confronting people who are engaging in ‘student culture’, because they are on a placement and will soon be gone, and instead talk behind their backs to the graduate team (managers).
• Avoid confronting people early because it is the manager’s job and it will only end in bad feeling if HR try to give the feedback second-hand (Graduate Managers).
• Avoid confronting people in training because it will likely decrease the satisfaction ratings on which your performance is assessed (external trainers).

We could make sure we are ill-equipped to give tough feedback to shift behaviour.

• Offer the role of Graduate Manager as a first management position.
• Give no training to graduate managers in how to set work standards, give formative feedback, and hold difficult conversations; provide no role modelling, coaching or assistance in this key part of the role.

And finally, we can reduce our power by aiming to buddy with graduates rather than manage them.

• Sharing our personal interests and strengths and weaknesses with graduates, but failing to establish our achievements and track record of success – so that they don’t see the Graduate Team as a successful group to look up to.

Food for thought?