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?

Very much agree with the spoon feeding aspect of this. I went into a school very recently to shadow teachers in an essay-based subject and they were teaching paragraphs with gaps for the students to fill in by year 8 or 9. By year 10 students were then regurgitating these paragraphs on their own. Added to that, the lesson plans the teachers were using were centrally-produced. It's almost like the learning expected is too hard for the average student, so teachers are making it easy by simply telling them what to write.

I can see how that might approach might work for more STEM-type subjects, where there are formulas to be learnt and applied, and perhaps also for MFL/grammar rules but it seemed odd with a humanities subject. Anecdotally, parents that I know have told me that when they asked at parents evening about concerns that their child didn't like poetry, they were told not to worry since they would just tell them what to write.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development

This "brain not fully developed until 25" thing does seem to have been swallowed whole and it is much more nuanced than that.

Also, it begs the question how the vast numbers of previous generations in human history coped with being considered fully fledged adults by their early 20s. I think in part at least it was because embracing responsibility for themselves as adults was expected of them. This is not a pop at young people. They are being failed by being infantilised in this way.

This is interesting because I saw a tiktok yesterday from a doctor who said similar about trainee docs - they come on ward rounds (or something, can't remember exactly and I'm not a doctor) and won't do blood draws or what have you because they don't feel like they should have to. He, as a seasoned doc, said that they need to know the basics so if they need to, they can do these things. Also that they're treating human beings and not an illness and it doesn't bode well if they never have any actual human contact!

The other stuff I can't comment on as all the 'trainees' I've ever had contact with have been on the graduate scheme for our company so if they don't work hard they don't pass and also don't have a job.

This thread is extremely interesting. I’m currently three months into my PGCE at the ripe old age of 43 (44 next month). I’ve worked in a variety of schools from special to grammar, but thought now my own DCs are growing up I would give teaching a go. I adore my (non bursary subject). But at this point, I don’t think I want to teach at the end of my course. I may look at a SEN role. Schools are broken, there’s no time or money. I have 32 pupils in one GCSE class and half of them can’t access the curriculum. They can’t spell, let alone grasp complex concepts.

To say that the universities are holding students’ hands is an understatement. I have had lectures on how to speak to your mentor in a professional manner-how to make a phone call, how to dress! There’s older students that can barely speak English from all over the world, not sure how they’re going to promote literacy and oracy. It’s a massive cash grab. They’ll let anyone in.

I must add though that there are some amazing young people that will make excellent teachers on my course.

My dad said that in the nineties, they had apprentices coming into the workplace who clearly didn't want to be there and didn't care. One put his feet on the table in front of the (very intimidating) HR woman. But I've also heard lots of reports of the latest generation being more entitled and delicate. This is a change in a few short years - people notice it getting worse year after year in schools.

"She was laughing at the idea of someone coming in to manage others when they hadn't worked at all"

That's not necessarily a bad thing. My first job after graduating was as a Trainee Manager with Sainsburys. There was a 12 month training programme where you had to learn about actually running a supermarket and also managing people.

Admittedly, I had worked for them while I was doing my A levels and a summer job while at university, but most people joining the training scheme hadn't worked before.

Likewise, one of my cousins. He went straight from university and joined the army as a commissioned officer. Straight in to manage others when he hadn't worked at all.

But if you're talking about a line management role that doesn't involve any sort of structured training then, yes, I agree with you that it is quite laughable.

I don't think it's infantilisation to acknowledge that you are not your fully formed adult self at 18 and that the aim should be to grow and develop throughout our lives, not to stop when full time education does.

I mean even in recent history the age of 21 was considered a bigger milestone than 18 and there has always been a recognition of youth lasting about up the age of 25. Even when life for a lot of people was more often pretty short.

I don't think it's infantilisation to acknowledge that you are not your fully formed adult self at 18 and that the aim should be to grow and develop throughout our lives, not to stop when full time education does.

No, but that is when they should be developing towards that self. Not let off any sort of responsibility and self-sufficiency until their mid-twenties, by which point they are ruined.

Also surely trainees are by their nature in training?

Employers seem to want to have their cake and eat it these days.

They want the education system to churn out perfectly formed automaton workers at 21 and don't seem to want to bother to train them up or pay for it in the sort of taxation required to have a very good state education system.

When in the past they'd have already been training them from the age of 14.

Interesting you say that.. I am an immigration lawyer and have a client who recently has only hired Indians into this graduate trainee engineering roles. He said that every single British citizen hire he has brought in has let him down - lazy, not motivated to learn, going off sick every week. The now 3 Indian citizens he has hired have been an absolute dream - always willing to learn, respectful, turn up on time, and well qualified. It's not a case of exploitation, he's paying a decent salary, it's just the attitude of these individuals is so much better than the British workers he comes across. He's willing to pay the extortionate visa fees to secure reliable employees.

The point is, SharpOpalNewt, that the overall standard of trainees seems to have significantly dropped, as posts describe. Of course trainees keep on learning, that's the point of supporting a trainee, but they need to have a basic level of ability to start of with.

I think kids aren’t left to sort things out for themselves enough or told to just bloody get on with it. They don’t experience enough discomfort and when they do instead of being allowed to sit with that then figure out how to resolve it a parent tries to fix it.

I used to feel I’m a bit tough on my kid compared to some other parents but fuck it at least she’ll be employable. If mine cried over a sanction she had actually earned she would get short shrift for it. I do think we need to rethink parenting a bit, I’m definitely going to try to step back more.

I disagree. Employers are complaining about the lack of basic life skills, i.e. turning up on time, being able to read and write to a basic standard, being able to understand basic instructions, etc. You have to question what schools are doing if they're churning out pupils who can't do that kind of thing as surely those "skills" were needed for school in the first place.

Whats the book?

If you are managing a trainee, then it is fundamentally your fault.

1. Set out expectations and check theirs; at the outset and each week - who does what, when, why
2. Guide behaviour based on self interest - who wants to be promoted, who wants to be recommended to stay on, who wants a personal reference to add to their CV... "Have you noticed the kids behaved better for you today when they were kept busy? How can you build on that?"
3. Reinforce rules - if they are late, they miss info and get a note sent to college. Polite but fair, make them articulate their own behaviour impact. "Do you know who is looking after the chuldren or what they are learning if you are late?", "And how does it work when you graduate, so parents bring kids to your class door but nobody is there?"
4. Advise college to resolve issues or find the trainee another post.

I remember 15 years ago having a graduate who wanted to advise the client in his second week, on a legal matter (not a legal role nor legal graduate), and appeared stunned that I said he wouldn't be allowed to talk. Some take a few weeks longer than others to figure out expectations, but he's done well for himself eventually and still sends me an occasional friendly update. They are there to learn, don't be annoyed just teach them.

They were complaining about this for my generation in the 1990s too. They are always complaining.

I agree, no workplace should be relying on an assumption junior staff will take on extra work all the time, its poor resource planning to assume that!

I think it depends on the type of job. Min wage work often attracts those with minimum or no qualifications, poor work ethic, and with the younger generation I am just seeing a lot of laziness and not taking responsibility. There are a lot of good workers out there too, but it’s a pretty basic thing to turn up on time, and many younger folk can’t even do that. Just my observations. I would expect someone like a junior doctor to always be punctual and proactive, or else what are they doing a doctorate for, they’d be wasting their time otherwise! I think there is the other issue of financial incentive. What has a young person got to look forward to apart from an abysmal job market, housing crisis and cost of living crisis when they’re earning £10 an hour? I think do some they do think it’s easier to start a YouTube channel or go on onlyfans…

We also take "brightest and best" graduates in terms of the overall graduate pool. We need grads who are motivated and self reliant and can work independently, interact with clients etc. We still get good grads but increasingly we see similar problems even with academically high quality graduates. They are far from the majority but considering what we pay and the calibre we shouldn't see this at all.

We run residential graduate "boot camps" - several weeks long, expensive to deliver but we invest a lot in our people. Accommodation is in 4* hotels or similar and the partner/MD levels who give up their time to act as faculty use teh same room types as the trainees. We have had parents phone the training leads to complain that PFB's hotel room isn't good enough, they don't like the food, they need to start the day later (because walking downstairs in time for 9.00 is not a reasonable expectation). Also parents complaining that PFB had been out drinking in the evening and we hadn't arranged transport back (its not a jail, if the grads want to socialise in the evenings they are free to so do).
We have endless self diagnosed MH conditions - despite the fact that we offer extremely good health cover including extensive MH cover.

Even ten years ago this sort of thing was so rare that it would result in an investigation to find out what if something abnormal had happened. Now the training team just roll their eyes at yet another one.

We have had to change the content of the boot camp not just to reflect business and technology change but to add more on basic "life skills". We always had an element of comms training - not everyone comes with the confidence and experience associated with a privileged upbringing. However that was factual, practical training to bring everyone up to a similar comms and confidence level, not things like "come to the class with your kit" or "make sure you arrive on time".

Our grad recruitment team do now flag up applicants who can show previous work experience/long term volunteering experience (not gap yaar voluntourism) whilst at school and university as a big plus point. It seems to correllate well with the right attitude and independence in the workplace.

I don't know if its over protectiveness in upbringing or SM - I do think both are big factors, especially for self diagnosed MH conditions which are of the type where "just get on with it" is actually the best evidence based advice.

Gosh I wish they taught like this at my daughter's (very academic) school. She's not as academic and struggles with the university type learning style of it all!!
I think she'd get really good GCSEs if she knew exactly what to write and simply had to learn it

Its also woth noting that our graduate apprenticeship scheme rarely has problems with low motivation, poor levels of independence - possibly because as @taxguru says - they have to go through even more hoops than the grads to make the grade and win a place.

Has it ever occurred to some adults that authoritarian working styles, commonly associated with boomers, may be ineffective? Instead of harsh discipline, we should focus on collaboration and cooperation. Just because we stood in a corner as children and it didn’t seem to harm us doesn’t mean it’s the best approach..🙄

Boomerness is being rejected by the younger cohorts. Get over it.

I work in horticulture in the private sector and was asked by a client to take on a young woman of 23 to work alongside me. She was very agreeable, well-educated with a 1st in her degree. We got on well and I liked her but she knew absolutely nothing about horticulture (she thought squashes grew underground, like potatoes). To start with she was also seriously lazy and would text to tell me she was 'letting myself sleep until 1pm and will come in after lunch'. Whatever, I wasn't paying her, but I couldn't let her carry on like that. If she complained, after an hour of work, of being tired my response would be 'go and lie down then' and she'd find herself a pile of leaves and lie in it until she got cold.

I encouraged, challenged and sometimes cajoled her into doing some meaningful work and bit by bit she improved. There was a lot of 'Come on, put your phone away and get your boots on, there's a lot to do today'. Then we had that really cold spell in 2018, the Beast from the East, and the challenge was to turn up to work with everyone else and just get on with the job. The ground was frozen so we were working in woodland at that point. Some days were -10C, with a wind that made it feel a lot colder, so simply too cold to stand around, you had to keep moving or freeze. But during that time she changed and rose to the challenge with a cheerfulness that I was glad to see. She'd turn up wearing six layers and get stuck in. In return I made sure we had a hot lunch, which we heated and ate outside, so it became an adventure of sorts. Fortunately her ego was big enough that the experience did her good and she was proud of herself for getting through the tough part, as I was proud of her for trying. This was one person and it was really hard work to start with. I can't imagine that process being constant.

I disagree about Covid being the cause due to loss of the student experience. We were seeing the problems highlighted before Covid. If by the age of 18 a student doesn't have experience of physically socialising, managing their own work and decent communication skills then they have been failed by their parents and possibly the schools.

This generation is the first generation brought up (in the UK and much of western society) with the combination of ultra protectiveness in the real world whilst also exposed to unmanaged social media throughout most of their development. That unmanaged social media which promotes a focus on the self rather than the community, which profits from driving fear and division and "doctor google" promoting self diagnosis of MH conditions.

I agree there have always been a proportion of crap teachers, just as there is a proportion of crap performers in every job. I think that is separate from the development issues we see in young adults.

Its nothing to do with authoritarianism. In fact it was the boomer generation was the generation which did away with many hierarchies in the workplace, made first names at all levels standard, sharing of physical space between levels and promoted more collaborative work practices.

Its about a change in development patterns which has resulted in larger numbers of young people being poorly prepared before they even reach the workplace.