Three Promising Practices to Engage a New Workforce

Hull: The next generation, a huge reservoir of talent, gets a lot more advice about building a personal brand than about building a career.

By Stephanie J. Hull

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

Right now, tomorrow’s workforce is on TikTok and Instagram, looking at “influencer” or “crypto genius” as an exciting career option — not so different, really, from a previous generation wanting to be a pop star or win Shark Tank.

Like those old-school dream gigs, today’s hot online careers are mostly unattainable and unstable. For some young people, they’re also a capitulation: “My job feels like a dead end and business school isn’t in my future. Maybe people will watch me unbox purchases.”

The next generation, a huge reservoir of talent, is rarely challenged to set a higher bar — and they get a lot more advice about building a personal brand than about building a career. Those of us leading organizations owe it to them to demystify professions and create new pathways.

Here are three promising practices for the new workforce, especially for young people without traditional access: intensive mentoring, cross-organizational cohorts, and early experiences with professional environments.

Mentoring

The traditional approach to mentoring is the “old boy network.” Since the 1990s, more workers have also benefited from informal networks such as alumni associations or sometimes nonprofits that serve this purpose. However, young people may need more formal mentoring within the workplace to thrive and persist.

Many companies assign mentors to brand new employees, but not generally for the long term. The next generation needs ongoing mentoring. First-gen professionals, especially, can find it difficult to seek guidance. They may not want to appear vulnerable; they may not know what they don’t know. Online courses — valuable for a population that has grown up watching videos — can help. But there are a million; which ones are useful? And perhaps the new employee fears being caught trying to learn their job. To address such needs, they need more than a mentor. They need a navigator.

Beyond knowledge gaps, some young employees also need help with organizational culture. I know a recent college graduate in a start-up job where colleagues regularly drink at work. She felt she had to participate to be taken seriously. Some other, more senior colleagues who had opted out could have helped her find another way to engage. It’s on us to assist young coworkers struggling with fit.

These new members of the workforce also need encouragement to find ongoing mentoring and keep seeking engagement. For many of them, an elevator ride with the CEO would be a terrifying moment, rather than an opportunity. A lack of guidance leads to frustration, and ultimately nonpersistence.

Cohorts

It doesn’t always take a senior person to help a new employee navigate. Peer cohorts can also help. Most young workers are already comfortable traveling in packs socially. An ongoing professional conversation with their peers can benefit both them and the company, and shared responsibility for problem-solving can be liberating. Women in particular have a stereotypical but real inclination to be useful, and they are more apt to receive if they can also give. Cohorts offer a way to do that.

Even for midlevel employees, there is value in connecting across silos. I know one organization where colleagues from different departments meet monthly to catch up on their work. Individuals offer each other expertise, and departments pitch in together, which creates efficiencies.

Engaging like this especially helps employees who are more reticent. Helping as well as being helped creates social glue — and it can also build organizational loyalty, as employees see themselves in a bigger picture.

Early exposure

“Summer camp” experiences on college campuses are a common way to create access and persistence for first-generation students. When middle schoolers visit campuses, they can imagine college life. Similarly, Take Your Child to Work Day has, since the 1990s, offered glimpses of the working world—at least, for children of white-collar professionals.

But when parents work in a meatpacking plant, their children have no opportunity to get to know office culture. More and more next-gen workers lack a vision of how to belong in a corporate or institutional setting. Yet that is the most powerful element: the vision of oneself in a new context, and permission to be there.

To get the farm team ready and overcome the sense of “not for me,” employers must invite them in early. Google, for example, invites school groups to its campus. If these young people eventually land an interview, the campus already feels familiar.

If these promising practices seem self-evident to you, consider where you learned about your work environment. If the answer is “in college” or “from relatives,” you might ask: Who in my workforce did not get that experience? And if the answer is “I learned the hard way,” can you help someone else not to have to learn the hard way, too?