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?

Well if they manage to qualify they'll get a shock in their ECT year!

I know a woman in her late 40s who has just qualified as BA cabin crew. They are actively taking on older people. Kids grown up, no maternity leave, good work ethic and not going to take any nonsense.

The area is work in employees quite a few 18 to early 20's and a great many of them are like this! Do as little work as possible, know all their rights but not their responsibilities! Don't want to do any of the dirty work. It can be really unfair on the other staff who have to work with them.

My DP runs his own business and has employed lots of trainees. Some have been amazing and some quite staggering!

One girl didn’t want to do a task because she said it was boring. Another thought it was perfectly acceptable to charge a coffee to expenses bought on route to work.

Someone else asked for a pay rise shortly after joining and was advised pay would be reviewed at the annual review. Helping out at an exhibition the following day with my DP her boss and other colleagues, she was moody and grumpy and not engaged the whole day. Thankfully she left shortly after however was in touch recently to see if DP’s company had any vacancies….

When I was young and starting out in a work, I did what I was told and worked as hard as I could. I still do!

They will soon have a shock when faced with a difficult primary class of disobedient children. That's the reality. But I do agree.There doesn't seem to be that grit and sense of responsibility. How will they cope with the long hours, the exhaustion, lesson planning. You need to be tough to be a teacher, especially in today's climate.

I think this is an understatement.
I cannot stand this part of society.

We have student physios on placement, and apart from 1 terrible one, in 15 years of having them they have varied between adequate and exceptional, with most coming under heading of 'good'. I do find that the ones who are slightly older (mid twenties upwards) are better than the ones who went to uni straight out of school. Having had a job or other life experience seems to make them better at time management, communication with patients, problem solving.

Are your trainees all very young?

Sadly if you are in teaching you are mentoring your future boss when they leapfrog to SLT as they have all the buzzwords and l no interest in actually planning or teaching... and they are cheap!

We’ve noticed this too with our recent newly qualified nurses. They can’t take any feedback without accusing us of bullying. They don’t turn up to mandatory training, or turn up late. They go off sick at every opportunity. They generally just can’t cope and want hand holding.

They don’t seem to realise how much time and effort it takes to organise their rotas, re-book training, arrange sickness meetings that they don’t turn up to, devise action plans etc, whilst we’re all trying to do our jobs as well. It’s exhausting.

I know what you mean but there are reasons for it. Whereas 25 years ago most teens would have had Saturday job, employers are pretty much unable to give jobs to teens now. Most local authorities have stipulations for businesses that mean it’s basically pointless and dangerous to employ a teen over an 18year old. Before 16 for instance , our local authority wouldn’t even allow them to boil a kettle. Allowing them to do so could leave you with a hefty fine. Of course plenty of people risk it, but spot checks mean it’s a risk.
So adults are entering the workplace with zero experience.

Not true for everyone of course but weaponised incompetence is a tool of choice for the trainees I have worked with in recent years. They will play dumb and ask stupid questions so the more experienced around them jump in to help with prep, resources etc etc etc. They could do it all without help but why show you a draft email to a parent to make sure it is OK of they can bombard you with email after email of questions until you write it for them and they press send- remembering to CC management of course. Or when they add one slide to your series of lessons and send it out to all colleagues and again CC in management.

There were hopeless trainees when I was a PGCE student 15 years ago. Some who regularly turned up hungover or having been out all night, ones who were far too mentally fragile for the job etc. they tend to drop out, though?

Also if we took more than a total of 2 weeks sick leave throughout the year, you had to repeat a placement. Is that not still the case?

I didn’t see the post above, just the one where you said it wasn’t a profession. The tone was very hard to gauge so I do apologise!

Unfortunately I can’t say I’m surprised, when too many kids are so mollycoddled, led to believe that they don’t have to do anything if they don’t want to, and ‘mental health’ is increasingly used as a more or less unchallengeable get-out for anything.

I would certainly hope that there are still many who don’t fit this depressing bill, though.

You sound like a great parent, your son is lucky to have had you x

I have just retired from local authority work, and yes, I agree OP. Over the last few years we have had both school and university leavers who are not work ready, and seem to think that they should immediately be promoted to a senior position whilst having no concept of attending work on time, working with others (at times, working at all) or generally being an asset.

DD is half way through her first placement on a PGCE. Science based.
She says the problems are partly expectations based. Management at her placement school said "Why on earth do you want to go into teaching?" she has a first in a STEM subject, wants to teach - she was inspired to by a couple of great role models, both at school and uni. Gets told her enthusiasm won't last long... they don't see many like her etc...
And partly bursary based. Get a 2.2 in a sciency degree and apply to teach a science subject... £25k+ bursary. Will not necessarily attract those motivated to actually teach, many are those who wish to continue in education with a fair income for a student.
Her course has 60 would be teachers spread across many subjects. About half are there for the bursary. A lot of the rest are there to not have to get a job yet. She and half a dozen others can't wait to get their qualification.

I used to mentor trainee teachers 20 years ago. They were always a bit of a mixed bag but I don’t think many people see it as a desirable job any more and that is reflected in the type of applicants you get now.

We have had only one like this - brilliant exam results but resilience was very low, needed a lot of hand-holding and an exceptional amount of support and training - ironic given how confident she was about how much she was worth, she was going to make an enormous contribution - I told her if she did she'd be looking at a great bonus, she suggested I should increase her salary because it was up to me to encourage women to ask for more money - at that point I was very worried and suggested we considered withdrawing her employment offer.
There are people with imposter syndrome and those with an over-inflated notion of what they are worth and what they can achieve.
Thankfully she left voluntarily because the performance review was just around the corner.

OP, as a university lecturer I can promise you that many of their tutors will find them just as infuriating, and will be utterly embarrassed by the idea that their students are behaving like this. But there's very little they can do if they're not getting genuine feedback from you guys about how bad it is, so do tell the university at every opportunity. Formally, if at all possible.

From our perspective, students don't read, can be breathtakingly helpless, and without doubt have much higher levels of anxiety and mental health issues than even ten years ago. Someone earlier said it was all about expanding education. Yes, that's kind of true, but not necessarily in a bad way. When I went to university if you couldn't cope, you dropped out - see ya. Was that better? Well, maybe - except at least one student I knew dropped out via the roof of his accommodation block. The university back then took no responsibility for the struggles of its students and actively discouraged people to apply if there was any chance they couldn't cope with the pressure. I'm glad that's changed, but it means undergraduates include a much larger cohort of first generation students, of students who wouldn't have cooped with the previously highly competitive environments, and of students who have far less resources (mentally, socially and financially) than previous generations.

We do our best to prepare students for work, but it's largely impossible when contact hours at university are an average of 8 hours a week for many courses, and it's ultimately their course to fail; we don't have many levers. The pressure of the job(s) they eventually get will see them harden up - as several have said, the first few years of full time work will weed out those who can't manage it or who are too entitled. I recall some of my first jobs now and the memories are excruciating in terms of how helpless I was...

@RegardingMary I think this is one of the worst things I've read on this thread so far, terrible that you were then targeted for trying to uphold basic and decent standards, what a disgrace.

I've only had experience of two of this age group at work recently (undergrad placement students), but I'd have to say they were both great - did everything they were asked and did it well and to the deadlines, so they're not all bad!

Yes, definitely a number of things. I used to work in CAMHS and it was always multi factored. Parents are part of the picture, especially the kind of parents who can't believe their kid could ever make a mistake/behave poorly and demand for them not to face proportionate and appropriate consequences or make amends to others. Pandemic (and how parents/peers responded to it), schools being a strange mix of overly strict about silly things like uniform and pens and mollycoddling in other ways, like not dealing with bullies strictly enough or making sports days and things non competitive or never celebrating extraordinary achievements to ensure others don't feel bad, which is well intentioned but then kids who are good at certain things never get to shine. Expecting too much of the kids who aren't academically minded while expecting too little of those who are capable of being challenged a bit more. Social media and what kids are exposed to on there as well. Expecting an influencer lifestyle without doing any work for it.

I work in a different field and have found the same with a lot of (not all) graduate trainees. There’s an expectation that they will be excused if they don’t do the job.

I had one who was asked to prepare packs to send to the payments team - fairly standard trainee job - it didn’t get done because they needed to work from home because of their anxiety.

When I called to ask where the stuff was - because we were almost at deadline the guys mum answered the teams call and said we were being too hard on him expecting too much and she didn’t understand what he was meant to be doing so how could he possibly.

this was a job he’d done a previously. Mum was also upset he wasn’t included in meetings (he was) and annoyed he had been assigned training. When we did hold meetings that day she was on the teams call with him.

I did have to point out that her son was 25. And I didn’t think it was appropriate for her to be sitting next to him while he worked. Because confidentiality etc. apparently they didn’t have any secrets between them…

This is sadly true. Schools are not schools anymore. They are full of ‘teachers’ wanting to be friends with students. No discipline, and any teachers who expects order in their classrooms are more likely to face the wrath of parents. The profession is sinking and is unrecognisable from 20 years ago.