Recruiting and Training Trends Blog

It’s rude to let someone walk around with a piece of spinach in their teeth from lunch, right? Well, there’s a piece of spinach in your training and mentorship program. Although there have been great advances in closing the gender gap, it’s still present in some aspects of the workplace. Mentoring programs are still affected the gap.

Women hold the majority of entry-level positions at 53%. However when they begin to climb the leadership ladder, they leave management positions upon reaching higher rungs. Currently, women only make up 14.6% of senior management and vice president positions in Fortune 500 companies. This staunch difference between entry-level jobs and higher leadership could be attributed to the underrepresentation of women in mentorship programs. 

Gloria Larson, President of Bentley University, said:

“As women get close to attaining leadership positions, they need someone to turn to for help reaching that next step. One of the reasons so many women drop out of middle management positions is they don’t see other female staffers in similar jobs around them.”

According to a study Bentley University, 55% of the women surveyed agreed that women-specific mentorship programs have the potential to help women succeed in higher corporate positions. Another 52% said that women-specific networking could help women flourish in the workplace. The Bentley University study also showed that 57% of recruiters believe women are better candidates to begin with, so how do they drop so far in numbers as they climb the corporate ladder?

What’s being done to close the gap

There is still a disparity in the proportion of men to women in tech fields. However, Facebook, Pinterest, and Box have initiated a program to increase mentorship programs for women in tech fields. The program is called WEST – Women Entering and Staying in Tech. Facebook said in a recent statement:

“Mentorship can be incredibly influential in a woman’s career, and we’re excited to be tackling this challenge together. We believe that working together and providing more direct support, advocacy, and space for community development, we can create an impactful, scalable, one-on-one mentorship program to help women build and grow meaningful careers in tech.”

Men must play a part, too

“Every company wants to know how to find and keep highly talented women in the workplace.” – Marcus Buckingham, founder at TMBC

While women are a key role in developing a stronger female presence in any given mentoring program, men must play a key role as well. Even 37% of men agreed that male leadership could be an active part of a female mentorship program. The one-on-one mentorship programs like WEST are a start to the change. However incorporating men as mentors takes the process one step further.

Women’s rights and gender equity in the workplace advocates, like Bryan Pelley, note that a large issue with men’s roles in female mentorship is the male motivation for equality in the workplace. They choose to treat them the same – despite the fact they have different needs in the workplace – in an effort to not coddle very capable women. Pelley said:

“I’m comfortable with the idea that treating people ‘equally’ doesn’t actually mean treating people the same. You sometimes need to make adjustments to make sure people have an equal opportunity to succeed.”

Although there should be equal opportunities for success in the workplace, mentorship opportunities for men and women are not the same. Strides are being made towards mentorship equity. Better-suited and one-on-one mentorship programs targeted towards women could help to close the gap for women in tech fields. It could also close the gap between high-level positions between men and women. 

Because many organizations don’t have the same initiatives as WEST put in motion, there is a large difference in the number of men and women in managerial and senior levels. Change the underrepresentation of women in mentorship programs to see a higher number of women in high-level jobs.  

Tools like Visibility Software’s Cyber Train can get your company on the right path towards a better mentorship program. You can track training and manage program enrollments for the ease of tracking employee success. The automated approval streamlines the process, so there’s no need to wait on communication between management levels.

Have you reevaluated your training program lately? We have all the blocks and mortar you need to build a new one. Give us a call to get started. 

Growing up, children often look up to their parents for guidance. However, that guidance doesn’t have to stop in professional adulthood. Kevin Systrom, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, and other technology all-stars all had mentors. What does each of these people have in common? Their businesses were successful with the help of mentors in the last 15 years. Mentorship isn’t just a method teacher’s use in middle school to help cultivate generations for the future. Mentorship is a tool to professionally develop employees as well.

Mentors help new hires to create professional relationships with company leadership; however, the company as a whole will benefit from a mentorship program as well. An effective program will help organizations reach higher retention, meet diversity initiatives, and increase employee engagement.

What’s in it for you?

Increase your retention rates – This is perhaps one of the most important reasons mentorship programs matter in your workplace. Retention is critical to the health and growth of your organization. Successful pairing of mentors and mentees increase retention rates. In fact, retention rates were 72% higher for mentees and 69% higher for mentors in companies that created effective training programs. 

Build your employer brand loyalty – Mentorship programs increase employees’ loyalty to the organization. 70% of the Fortune 500 companies have official mentor programs. After all, they didn’t become Fortune 500 companies without employees who believed in the value of their organization. A company can showloyalty to employees through a mentorship program. Paul McDonald, Senior Executive Director at Robert Half, a staffing firm, says it’s important to show your appreciation in daily actions…

“Ask yourself am I loyal to my team. How do I show it. Do I work as hard as they do? Am I alongside them shoulder to shoulder in the trenches during peak times and do I have their back during rough times?”

Meeting your diversity initiatives – New hires and leaders who have similar interests, backgrounds, education, etc., have great potential to make a successful mentor/mentee team. Pairing the right employees and management personnel together can benefit from diversity initiatives as well as strengthen mentor programs. China Gorman, CEO at Great Place to Work Institute, says: 

“Today there is a wider awareness that the diversity focus should also consider values like cultural fluency, global mindset, language skills, etc., or ‘acquired’ diversity.”

Increase employee engagement – A mentorship program has the potential to change the 70% of disengaged employees into workers who are engaged and involved in the workplace. If an employee feels that their work is noticed and appreciated, they are more likely to be engaged in the workplace. Mentors can help to foster this productive atmosphere.

What’s in it for your employees?

Create meaningful relationships with leadership – Mentorship isn’t simply a tool with results that can be systematically measured. It’s a combination of careful planning and relationship development. Jeanne Meister, author of “The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today,” explains it best:

“A lot of companies’ structured mentoring programs have failed as they have tried to put structure to something that is basically a relationship.”

Opportunities for professional development – Your employees will gain professional knowledge at the hands of your managerial staff. What about the development of your management team? Managerial staff who participate in a mentor program are promoted 6x more often than those who opted out of the mentorship program.

Mentor programs are healthy additions to any onboarding program. They increase new hire involvement and create working professional relationships between the new hires and veteran employees. Creating company loyalty isn’t an easy task. Leaders have to show employees their loyalty to the team. You can do so utilizing a mentorship program.

By pairing the right leaders and employees together, you can create an atmosphere in which both leadership and new hires can learn something from each other. Your employees depend on the job to give them a sense of professional development, and the best place to start is with a mentorship program. Succession of knowledge to new employees provides continuity within the organization. It’s more than a teaching tool; it’s a professional development tool. The greats had mentors… where are yours?

The right training can augment your current mentorship program. Give us a call, we can set you up with Cyber Train to get you started.

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Internships are requirements for many college degrees and a distinct pathway to new experiences when looking into new career fields. Some students are lucky to get vital work experience in their internship… others not so much. Are your interns getting more than your morning coffee?

Interns – paid or unpaid – are more than just volunteers. They sought out your company to learn the industry and prepare themselves for work after college. So in order to properly mentor these eager workers, give them something meaningful to accomplish during while they complete another degree requirement. If handled correctly, interns can be a dynamic and vibrant addition to your talent pipeline. 

Need Some Fresh Ideas?

Look no further. Interns bring with them a deluge of creative ideas. New people have the potential to initiate projects and new methodologies with energy and timeliness to spare. Many are well into their junior and senior years of college – the time when much of the degree targeted classes are taught and just a year to two away from entry-level talent. They are learning things other company team members may have forgotten under the burden of years of experience or during the daily grind, plus they can be eager to learn and quick to take direction from senior team members. Internships are designed to give college students experience; however, they can open doors for you and your team as well. 

Learning Curve(s)

Yes, students apply for internships in order to fill college requirements. However, they are with the organization to learn something. The best part – their supervisors can learn a thing or two as well. Interns allow leaders to perfect their managerial skills in addition to mentoring the next generation of the organization’s employees. This isn’t just a valuable opportunity for upper management but to fill the pipeline with your younger employees who have yet to manage more than your desk Ficus. 

Victor Lipman (@VictorLipman1) of Howling Wolf Management Training gave some guidelines on the best practices for managing interns:

• Actually give them something to do – More than errand boys (and girls), interns can give back to the organization. Assign them tasks and projects that add value to the organization but don’t expose the company to risk. Most of them are new to the professional atmosphere, so offer guidance if needed. Ultimately, make sure they feel their work contributes to the company.

• Give constructive criticism – Feedback is crucial to professional development and progression of your intern team. Good and bad, constructive criticism is motivational for you and the intern as you learn how to help them move forward.

• Don’t forget about the evaluation – Let your interns know how their work impacted the organization. They’ve put a number of work hours into this learning process, so respect the time spent with an evaluation. Allow them the time to give their experience and what they learned as well.

Opportunity for Successful Recruitment

Your interns did a great job. You managed them well. Now turn them into your best asset, talent. Effectively turning your internship program into a recruitment tool is a way to lower your recruitment and onboarding costs. These individuals already know inner workings of the organization and have the training under their belt and chances are, they’re a cultural fit.

You’ve already got engaged workers on your hands, so why not save 76% in cost per hire? Convert interns from college students to full-time employees without the need for job listings, expensive advertising campaigns and tedious hiring cycles. However, it’s difficult to recruit interns to full-time positions if all they ever did was replace the binder clips. In fact, 63% of paid interns were offered full-time employment last year.

Rachelle Falls (@CorporateHRGirl), Founder & Chief Strategist of Sun Strategies said: 

“Right now, this millennial candidate wants to get to work and make a difference. They’re eager to be taught and to learn – all while putting their summer internship to good use.”

On a very basic level, internships are required for many degrees, though not all. The ultimate goal after graduation is to find a good job. So, it stands to reason that 32% of graduates who had an internship during their college career are fully employed.

This is an entry point for many interns into the professional world all while developing connections. Paid and unpaid interns are more than volunteers, they are students learning the inner workings of the professional world. As such, your team of interns should be doing more than getting just your morning coffee. Invite them to project meetings, give them a voice during the discussion, and see what kind of ingenuity sparks within your team. After all, hosting a robust internship program with well-developed training is an easy and inexpensive way to recruit the best and brightest for your team. 

Do you have the tools to get your internship training program off the ground? We can give you a lift.

 “Excellence is an art won training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle.

In a study Bersin, high-impact companies – organizations at a 3 or a 4 on Bersin’s Maturity scale – have a tendency to spend more on their training programs than organizations at a 1 or a 2. These companies excel in their training programs because they repeatedly spend the money necessary to make their training programs top notch. That repeated spend has resulted in the exponential growth of corporate training programs. It is one of the biggest expenditures for companies because a good training program means the difference between skilled and engaged employees. The study says:

“In fact our research shows that these companies not only perform at higher levels, they have higher levels of engagement, retention, and employee and customer satisfaction.” 

In the last two years, spending on training programs has grown from $60 billion to an astonishing $70 billion nin the United States alone. Worldwide, that number is nearly double at $130 billion.

There are awards for this, you know

So it must be important, right? Training programs determine the success of your new hires while solidifying company culture. Learning cultures established training programs are easily carried throughout the company with ongoing training opportunities for employees looking to further their knowledge and experience in their field.

Training Magazine ranks the best training programs each year. Companies who want to be considered for this award have to apply to the magazine. They are then scored a third party – a research and statistical data company – and the Training Magazine’s hall of fame. One of the areas Training Magazine considers is the financial investment the company puts into employee development. Editor-in-chief of the magazine, Lorri Freifeld, says, “They demonstrated an organization-wide commitment to and passion for training that is to be commended.” 2014’s list for the Outstanding Training Initiative Award Winners include well- known names such as:

·      BNSF Railway

·      Discover Financial Services

·      First Data Corporation

·      First Horizon National Corporation

·      Walgreens

Where there’s a skill there’s a way

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant

Technology isn’t just sought after in candidates, those same candidates want to see technology in their training. As the globe grows in the number and varying types of mobile devices and advances in technology, workers expect the same of training programs. The same study Bersin said that “informal training” – i.e., the sharing of knowledge – has become popular over the traditional classroom setting.

In 2013, companies spent 39% more on these social learning tools and expert directories than the year before. Training in the workplace has transitioned to online instruction from a classroom setting. However, because a pure online training program doesn’t normally show the results companies would hope for, most organizations do a two-thirds program. Meaning, a majority of the training is done online via gamification, social tools, and knowledge sharing and the rest is instructor led.  

The best corporate training programs are the ones who invest the most in them. In reality, providing quality training for your employees gives you a higher ROI and reduces turnover. If your employees understand the true value of their place in the company and how their training benefited them, there are less work-related reasons to find other employment.

The best training programs keep up with the growth of their employees professionally and technologically. We live in a digital world. To have a well-rounded and effective training program, you have to cater to the changes in technology and how your team can use them. Although Millennials prefer the online interaction, considering 4.6 million college students took one online course last year, their BaBoomer and Gen Xer supervisors want in on the action as well. Don’t leave your training behind; it needs dedicated attention, too.

Cyber Train is the remedy for any corporate training gaps. Give us a call, we will help you get started. 

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David Garvin, co-author of Is Yours a Learning Organization, said learning cultures are two things:

1.  Skilled in creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring and retaining knowledge

2.  Able to modify behavior in response to new knowledge and insight

Payscale’s whitepaper, Creating a Culture of Learning discusses how a learning culture derives from a commitment to education – both in and outside of the workplace. Establishing a learning atmosphere will stimulate employees in the office, increase levels of engagement and decrease turnover. Jacob Morgan, co-founder of the FOW Community, said:

“Challenging convention is the practice of going against and challenging the common assumptions that our organizations have been built on. For the better part of a hundred years our organizations have remained relatively unchanged.”

Morgan goes on to say that the cubicles, outdated management styles, and communication hindrances go against everything our world has modernized into. The changes in technology and the way employees think about work has begun to change the way workplaces operate. Thus, learning cultures are beginning to emerge. 

What exactly does a learning culture establish?

Continuous learning opportunities

Learning comes in all shapes and forms. Anything that challenges your employees to develop their skills further could be considered an opportunity for learning. More than just the traditional training styles and cultures of learning radiate into the workplace. They influence how employees function because they support continuing education. Ultimately, a learning organization will always bring in new and fresh knowledge. Executive professor of business administration at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, George Cook, addressed when a company pays for further education: 

“Education that is company-paid is important. A survey the Society for Human Resources Management shows 61% of companies asked still pay for employee undergraduate assistance, and 59% offer graduate assistance.” 

Aligned individual and organizational performance

It is important to align company goals through the entire organization to each employee. It forces employees to be responsible for obtaining the information and skills needed to accomplish their goals. Leadership is therefore responsible for guiding their employees to see the correlations between their goals and the greater goals of the company. Principle of THEaster Consulting, Terri Hartwell Easter, says that misaligned priorities often get in the way of leadership development. 

“In many cases, however, true integration of cultures has not been attempted – much less achieved – leaving shell-shocked employees, disparate teams, variances in management styles, lack of clarity in communication and a broken link between company goals and each individual’s role in achieving those goals.” 

Safe atmosphere for open discussion

The inability to take risks at work for fear of consequence inhibits the growth of a learning culture. Give employees the opportunity to generate their own ideas and process them with the team. Creating a safe atmosphere of open discussion allows employees to grow in creativity through professional disagreements. 

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It’s a team effort. As with any other major change to the functionality of an office, it takes a lot of people, and even more time. However, there are key members of your team that are necessary participants in the change. 

Senior Leadership

It all begins with leaders. They have to initiate the change through attitude and atmosphere. Leaders are responsible for setting the company goals and creating a culture that aligns with said goals.

Human Resources

The HR team supports the culture of learning through recompense of any efforts employees may take towards higher certification or particularly outstanding performance. If and when employees and senior leaders move on or retire, the HR team can pass the information and culture to the next generation of employees.

Chief Learning Officers

CLOs can help align organizational and personal goals. By linking the two, training officers can also connect mentors and mentees on a professional level. Connecting like-minded individuals on the same projects will then help the chief learning officers to measure the success of the company’s training techniques.

Building a culture of learning isn’t an immediate fix… it doesn’t happen overnight. By understanding what exactly a culture of learning is, leaders, HR professionals and chief learning officers can work together to facilitate the growth of knowledge within the organization. 

Call us to see how Cyber Train can help get your learning culture off to the right start.