By Anne Lamont, President and CEO, Career Edge Organization
Excerpt from Anne’s blog post for the Toronto Board of Trade’s VoteOntario2011 campaign.
- The first good reason to hire young graduates is likely also the most obvious one; without them businesses risk eroding their knowledge foundation. Let’s face it, our workforce is aging – and at an alarming rate for some organizations. Eventually, that knowledge housed within the senior ranks needs to be transferred, or it risks disappearing altogether. Keeping the talent pipeline fresh with new hires allows organizations to plan, build and transfer expertise and knowledge more seamlessly while mitigating timing delays or productivity.
- The second great reason to hire young workers is to help grow and develop your middle level managers. By creating coaching and mentoring roles for middle managers, exceptional opportunities for learning and professional development are also created that can only be achieved through first hand experience. When organizations encourage the development of these leadership skills, they are also fostering a supportive and positive workplace culture, in turn improving productivity, enabling the transfer and sharing of knowledge and driving innovation too.
- The third very compelling reason for hiring recent graduates is because they bring the latest training to their employers, fresh perspectives, can-do attitudes, and in many case, hands-on experience. Although it may sound trite, an investment in recent graduates is an investment in our future. Through their post secondary educations, university and college students today are not only getting exposed to traditional best practices, but more importantly they’re participating in and contributing to leading edge innovations and emerging technologies through living labs, think tanks, innovation centres, private/public sector partnerships and joint ventures – whether it’s through Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, Queen’s University’s Innovation Park, University of Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience or George Brown’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Community Innovation, just to name a few.
To read the full article on the VoteOntario2011 blog, click here.