6 strategies for helping school leavers and graduates adjust to shift work

Summer is a great time of year to be an employer, as a fresh wave of talent floods the job market. As young people across the UK submit their final GCSE, A-Level and university degree work, their attention turns to starting a career – and it’s your chance to find the cream of the crop.

But some career opportunities are a harder sell than others. Businesses with shift-based roles can find it difficult to compete against traditional 9-5s, and new employees need more support settling into a company where schedules change weekly or monthly.

To help you attract graduates and school leavers to your organisation and build a long-term, loyal working relationship, you need to help them adjust to working shifts. Here are some practical strategies you can use to achieve this:

1. Share the benefits of working shifts

Shift work gets a bad press, but there are lots of advantages to working flexibly – particularly when you’re young. For example:

Many students will be night owls, so the opportunity to work afternoons and evenings fits in with the natural sleep cycle they’ve developed while at college or university
Shift patterns change weekly or monthly, so employees can book personal commitments around their schedule rather than having to use holiday or lose out on paid work
Off-peak leisure and sporting activities are cheaper – many shift workers enjoy going to the gym during the day while it’s quiet, or getting cheap cinema tickets or mid-week lunch deals during their time off

Sharing the benefits of shift work will help potential employees to see it as a bonus, rather than a mark against your company when they’re interviewing for graduate jobs.

2. Give them plenty of time to prepare

Going into a shift-based role involves changing both people’s mindset and their lifestyle habits. The greater visibility you can give new recruits over their upcoming rota, the longer they have to prepare for this switch.

School leavers in particular are used to being guided by a timetable; shift patterns are no different. The further you can plan ahead and share schedules with your workforce, the easier young professionals will find being on time and ready to work hard.

3. Create a strong support network

Starting off in any industry is daunting; getting used to the practicalities of working shifts can increase the steepness of this learning curve. To help graduates find their feet, you may wish to assign them a mentor.

In addition to 1:1 coaching, it’s important to make sure that new recruits can learn from more experienced colleagues day-to-day. Careful shift planning is critical here – creating clear requirements for how many managers, team heads and/or qualification holders need to be on duty each shift will reassure young professionals that there’s someone knowledgeable to turn to if they get stuck.

4. Set a clear task load

Under the school and university system, students are used to being set assignments and given deadlines. It comes as a shock if they move into an environment with no formal structure or expectations in place.

While you hope they will use their own initiative over time, sharing a clear task list for every shift will help your business to get rapid value from graduate recruits. It also makes sure labour is being divided equally and responsibly; you don’t want highly qualified, well paid employees doing simple admin tasks that can be taken care of by a new starter.

In the longer-term, good task management enables you to develop young professionals’ skills and capabilities, so you can add more to their workload as they show an aptitude for certain activities. Plus, setting clear parameters stops inexperienced workers from ‘going rogue’ and making a mess of important processes in an effort to impress you!

5. Schedule regular breaks

Doing a 10 or 12-hour shift can be tough on experienced workers – it’s even harder for new recruits. In an unfamiliar working environment, school leavers and graduates may not have the confidence to say they are feeling fatigued. This can compromise productivity at the best; create a major health and safety risk at the worst.

Your company can get around this by scheduling regular rest breaks for your entire team, coordinated through a central people management system. This enables workers at all levels to recharge their batteries without leaving key operations unattended or causing staffing shortages. And it will get the best performance from graduates across the course of their shift.

6. Let them manage their workload online

Remember that today’s school leavers and graduates are more than just a fresh resource; they’re a new group of professionals who think and act differently to more experienced workers.

Today’s new starters grew up in the internet era, so their expectations of what tools employers offer will differ to previous recruits. They want to manage their job online like they manage their life online and expect a consumer-grade experience; entering a world of paper-based processes and manual spreadsheets will feel quite jarring.

One of the simplest, most cost-effective ways to help new recruits succeed in the workplace is to give them access to online shift planning and task management software. This will provide complete visibility over critical work information, helping them to turn up on time and add immediate value.

Get the most out of graduates with shift planning software

A good shift planning platform will do far more than help your newest recruits to feel confident; it will also help you to manage many of the other strategies we’ve mentioned. For example, you can use an online shift planner to stagger staff breaks throughout each day, create ‘lift and shift’ roster templates to plan schedules far in advance, and share daily tasks lists for employees to complete.

Best of all, you can share schedules with your workforce through Android and iPhone mobile apps, so they can view tasks on the move. This gives new recruits access to up-to-date information in a format that fits in with their lives; they can get up to speed quickly and feel confident in their role.

Try WhosOffice for free to see how our shift planning software can improve your workforce management.