Breaking in Young Hires

Shawnee Love   •  
May 23, 2012

Like it or not, if part of your people strategy is involves hiring young workers, then you are in for headaches.  I often recommend avoiding hiring anyone who has never worked for another company because the unrealistic expectations, lack of work ethic, and training requirements make the hire more costly than the minimum wage offer would indicate.

Seriously, add up training costs, cost of errors, handholding, and teammate and supervisor stress while training the new hire and you might be better off to pay a few dollars more an hour and hire someone with more experience right off the bat.

However, if you are committed to hiring young workers, then you really need a plan and system for breaking them in- ideally gently and quickly. Yes, you should still orient them well and teach them about the job and health & safety, but don’t stop there.

  • Set realistic expectations about terms and conditions of employment such as hours of work, benefits, wages and wage increases before you hire.
  • Teach new hires about your expectations around work ethic by not only telling them the rules, but by showing them lots of examples of those ethics and expectations in practice.
  • Expect to teach and then teach again, because repetition works.
  • Be kind and open to questions and mistakes because they will happen.  Use a group debrief so everyone learns from the inquiries and errors at the same time.

Remember, you were likely once that naive in the eyes of your boss, and you evolved, and so can that new worker.  Also remember that young person is a product of his or her environment which while it may be a foreign ecosystem to you, it is real and likely shared by many of the same age. Be prepared to do it all again for the next hire.