Trainees no longer ready for workplace

[Kukcoo]

I used to love having trainees allocated to us. They were so enthusiastic, hardworking and a breath of fresh air. It was great to see them develop.

The last few have acted like they're doing us a favour if they turn up by lunchtime because they could have called in sick for nothing. Seriously can't be bothered doing the basics and expect everything to be done for them. Little respect for anyone else and the huge support they're being given. Won't meet a deadline, because this would affect their mental health and basically impinges on their human rights.

They all still expect to qualify and will be passed by the provider unless they do something truly dangerous, but they won't have the real experience or skills to join the workplace and get on with a job.

I'm barely even a different generation, but wouldn't have dreamed of acting the way they do when I was learning and felt I had to prove myself. AIBU to expect standards to be the same?

I'm quite senior in my job but fortunately a specialist who doesn't have to manage anyone. I don't particularly want to manage people of any age.

Recently my job has involved a bit of HR work (a one off, thank God) and two female employees close to retirement age, egged on by a senior male manager aged 50, have been bullying an employee in her 30s (who is lovely and competent) as if they are still in the school playground.

When I have had to manage recent graduates in the past I've found them scarily high achieving, sensible and brilliant at their job! Much better than I was at their age.

You dont have to be mean to them, Im very casual and easy going but I tell them once things like lateness are not acceptable because once they are qualified who will be doing their work if they come in late everyday. I point out the dress and hair code and expect this to be consistent from day 1. If I dont teach them who will?

Our L3 apprentice is brilliant! smart, proactive, hardworking and, after an initial couple of weeks of seeming absolutely terrified, a good communicator.
However, we had over 150 applicants for the role, offered 5 interviews, 3 actually showed up and of the 3 he was the only one who showed up on time, properly dressed, prepared and who was able to maintain a small amount of eye contact (very important for an in person, customer facing role).
When we asked about the college he told us they hadn’t helped at all with any type of interview prep and the apprentice programme was being administered by apprentices!

Refuse to do the printing and tell them you are there to observe. Let them deal with the consequences of not having the documents, worksheets etc. If that means the kids play up because of their lack of planning let them deal with the behaviour management.
Do not sign off on the planning competencies.
Re the meeting do not sign off on this either.
Make these targets for their next observation.

I'm a lecturer and I have some absolutely amazing students and some who need their hands held.
I had one recently who was good academically but wouldn't work with me once she discovered I am gender critical (as my colleague put it, is she going to do this in a real job?)
One that my colleague who taught them for UG said "Lucky old you!" when they found out I had this student for an MSc class.
One that wanted us to move the summer exams for them so they could take a summer job abroad (no, sorry, mate).

@Ineedanewsofa Good grief, that's poor on the part of the college!
We get our UG students to practice CVs as an assignment, and we offer interview practice, and presentation practice (some do, to be fair, avoid all such things, but that's their problem really).

Very good point. I think this is where Saturday/holiday jobs help. I remember one of the full-timers taking me to one side when I was 16 and gently having a few words. I got the message! We both worked on the record counter when that was a thing and I wanted to choose the music. She basically explained that she outranked me and got to choose. She did play some stuff I liked :)

I think covid has had an impact here - it's left a bunch of kids seriously lacking in social skills. Trainees are always a bit of a pain to work with, though. You always get a few who just don't take it seriously at all.

Oh yeah, I had a Saturday job in a pub and had office experience- my mum managed to wangle me a few weeks where she was working here and there. But a London law firm was quite something else.

I think the firm belief, as a result of poor reporting and interpretation of a single study, that brains are developing until they are 25, doesn't help.

Brains develop through stimulus and feedback, so if someone is in fact to be a functioning adult by their mid-twenties, they need to start on that pathway years before. Additional responsibility, part-time work, independence, the expectation of being able to communicate politely and effectively... this is how you learn.

You now have parents that have decided that this is far too much to expect of a young adult whose brain isn't, to use a phrase I literally saw someone on here using yesterday, "fully cooked". So they place no expectations on them and mollycoddle them and never let them learn, make the mistakes and take the knocks necessary to learn and grow up.

Of course they're going to be bratty, overgrown children and teens well into their twenties. They were literally denied the brain development to have the appropriate level of maturity.

This is wonderful!

I'd argue otherwise. I think students who actually stuck it out through covid DO demonstrate resilience, self motivation, etc., especially at Unis where there were no "in person" lectures or seminars for a year or more, Uni buildings were locked (inc library), and they barely left their rooms. The ones who started Uni in 2020 and stuck it out without giving up or taking a year out, really ARE the ones with resilience etc. It was so easy for them to either not go in the first place and take a year out, or to just give up, but most saw it through, in adversity.

I know you're primarily meaning social skills, but that's the least of the problems for a lot of youngsters today. For a lot of "quieter" students, the lock downs, lack of "freshers week" pub crawls and parties, etc., was actually good for them as they weren't pressurised into doing things they didn't want to do, and weren't looking on the side lines at everyone else having fun if they hadn't "found their tribe". I'm still on a few Facebook Uni parent groups and lots of parents are saying their children are still struggling at Uni due to not "fitting in" with the party and drinking culture - ironically those kinds of students actually found the covid years better as there wasn't the same culture. Such a shame that in these supposedly enlightened times, the drinking and partying culture still dominates the first few weeks/months of Uni life!

As an ex manager, l can see both sides of this.
Not with trainees, but with younger employees, ie, first/second jobs.
Most were fine. Friendly, keen, enthusiastic and eager to learn the job.
I also had a couple who were a nightmare. One in particular.
She clearly didn't want to be there, didn't pull her weight in the office, very hit and miss as regards timekeeping, constantly on her phone.
I once had to tell her that she shouldn't be painting her nails in the office ("I'm on my break!")
The dealbreaker was when l'd had a day off, and came back to work to the rest of the shift complaining about her. Someone from another part of the building had come into our office, and she'd sat chatting to them for over an hour while everyone else was working (our work was on a timely basis, we had an hour to process it once it came in).
I printed up activity logs (our work was data entry, so keystrokes were recorded) for that particular period of time, not just for her, but for the rest of the shift, went through them with a fine tooth comb, and the other staff were right. She'd done nothing, when they'd worked constantly.
Knowing the person she was, l then asked another manager to check the logs so there was no question of her activity, or lack of, and so that l couldn't be accused of picking on her. They reached exactly the same conclusion as me.
So l had to speak to her about it. She was totally unconcerned, sat picking her nails and sighing. I had to escalate it to my line manager, not just because of the inactivity, but also because of her attitude.
Fortunately she got pregnant not long after, and left.
Conversely, I've just recently retired from retail (a stop gap for a few years) and the youngsters l worked with there were lovely. Hardworking, friendly and keen.
Even though they were usually only there temporarily/in seasonal roles.

The thing is that not so long ago (just a few decades), children as young as 15 were starting in the workplace in full time/permanent jobs, and more recently it was 16, then 18. Now because of the obsession with Unis, it's risen to 21, and now it seems they're being excused until 25 due to "brain development". So, in a few decades, the age of being able and capable of proper work has fallen back by a whopping 10 years. Sorry, don't accept that at all. It's just facilitating even more molly-coddling to excuse them by saying about brain development. These "child-adults" need to be challenged more about their behaviour and not allowed to get away with it. They need proper sanctions and punishments, otherwise, they're still not going to be "fully functioning adults" even at 25!

There have always been the good, the middling and the hopeless. Friend and colleague of mine was supervising a graduate student in training for a professional role. One morning she was staggered to get a call from said student saying that they wouldn't be coming in as it was raining and they didn't like driving in the rain. I stress we are talking normal rain, not a storm and their route to work was 1 A road. Trains were available also.

This was 30+ years ago.

As an ex-primary teacher, I don't think I can blame trainees/ECTs in some ways. I think the reality of teaching as a profession is so far away from the lovely, hopeful vision that trainees begin with. That's driven out of you pretty quickly. I can't blame them for already wanting out of it.
I think perhaps the younger generation find the demands too much or aren't emotionally mature enough to cope with it? Our brain isn't fully developed until our early-mid twenties so I do think this has an impact, coupled with the state of society in general and the world these young people have grown up in.

You're blaming the teachers who taught them for not telling them off & just praising them, 'dont tell them off for being lazy', but at the same admit that you yourself no longer discipline kids as you'll get nasty email from parents. Well, there's your answer. It's not the teachers that are to blame (not to mention hopefully most kids spend more time with their own parents than the teachers!) it's the parents. We have a generation of parents who they themselves were parented badly now and it's producing these feckless and entitled young adults.

I am in a 2nd year OT degree apprenticeship. I work FT and have uni time every week with uni lectures every 6 weeks and placements. Recently returned from third placement and it was interesting hearing their feedback. They said it had been refreshing to have students who were on board and enthusiastic and actually turned up! It sounds like the students from BSC who are likely younger who were on placement last year needed a lot of hand holding and did a lot of WFH. We find this with new starters at work. They want to WFH a lot which they do have a right to, but how can you learn a new job properly without being in the office talking with colleagues and networking?

In my previous job I did some research around this, not necessarily trainees but young people newly entering the workplace and the view of many employers was that young new recruits lack basic work readiness skills. Which are the attitudinal and basic self-organisational skills that you mention.

@taxguru You make a very good point about the quieter students. My introverted dc is one of those. The lockdown meant he no longer had to explain again and again why they didn't want to go out, just wanted to watch a movie on the laptop, was happy to go the pub for a quick pint and back. He sailed through lockdown and aced his degree much to my utter surprise.

Its lack of free unsupervised play too. Kids used to take themselves off to play by themselves in their local neighbourhoods all day. That's where kids learnt independence skills, problem solving skills, conflict resolution, working together to acheive, and had to do all this themselves as they were unsupervised. Now there is a culture of not letting your kids our unsupervised - kids have organised play dates or go to adult supervised and controlled activities.

The young people we have are the product of the society and culture the adults have created.

Its no good blaming young people for not being responsible if we are not taking responsibility for the environment we brought them up in.

I took physio students on placement for about 30 years and they were generally of a certain standard, with the odd few really excellent or poor ones.

Then in the last few years I worked (so about 2017 to 2021), that changed. They were almost all either brilliant or terrible. The brilliant ones were almost fully-formed newl-qualified physios even on their first placement, and the terrible ones were terrible in a way I'd only seen once before in my career - kind of incapable of seeing what they were doing wrong, which was basically a compltee lack of common sense or care for patients.

I really enjoyed working with and supporting students, and spent a lot of time with them, which I increased for anyone who was struggling. But these hopeless students were on the whole not willing to stay late or come in early so I could give them more help.

One even accused me of bullying him because I gave him a very poor assessment (he was cruel and belonged nowhere near patients, whch I had no qualms about saying to him or his tutors). Luckily I had a long track record of excellent feedback from students, which just made him look even more of an arse. But I do wonder what the hell happened to universities to change the calibre of students, for better and for worse, so dramatically.

@colddays

The young people we have are the product of the society and culture the adults have created. Its no good blaming young people for not being responsible if we are not taking responsibility for the environment we brought them up in.

Nail on the head there. It's not the kids' fault that they've been badly "brought up" by parents and teachers. They know no different. They're not allowed the freedom that kids used to have. They're not given boundaries.

Following - interesting discussion.

It is because everything they need to pass the exam is spoon-fed.
Schools and colleges are under so much pressure to get results (league tables, Ofsted, etc) that they dare not give the students/pupils an inch to think for themselves and mess up.

There is no time for mistakes. No time for 'reading around the subject for general background'. Just each tiny bit of curriculum fed to them to memorise. Essay writing is modelled and scaffolded, each paragraph taught, so no room for the student to be creative in how they approach their writing.

So when faced with a blank email in an office and told to 'email the client', they have absolutely no idea how to start. Where is the model/scaffold/example to copy? Where is the content that used to be spoon-fed?
They are lost.