The future-ready workforce series - Converting & retaining the next generation of talent

Values matter to the next generation of talent, especially in the context of work.

In our Future Workforce Survey and Management Guide, we identified a “values gap” between Gen Z employees, their future employers and the organizations they work for. Essentially, employers struggle to identify the most important values of Gen Z – and it appears that many organizational values don’t align either.

Top three values of Gen Z employees, employers and organizations:

Almost 50% of Gen Z survey respondents said they would be unlikely to accept a full-time job that matches their skills, but not their own personal values. That’s why understanding the values of the next generation of talent – and identifying areas where your organizational values align – is an important step in improving how to recruit, motivate and retain Gen Z more effectively.

Get these values wrong and the endless cycle of employee churn continues. Get them right and you will build a talent pipeline filled with loyal employees who want to stick around. 

There’s a lot of pressure on talent managers to find and keep the right people. Establish positive, long-term relationships and reduce hiring risks by creating a deeply supportive and connected company culture.

As our workforce changes, company culture must push beyond offering spaces where your team members can socialize and have fun. While those features are great to have at work, it’s more important to offer opportunities for people to collaborate, create and challenge one another to affect positive change.

In a job posting analysis of 37,000 co-op jobs posted on WaterlooWorks over the last three years, job descriptions with keywords linked to company culture were found to receive a higher number of applications. Overall, this meant more interest from students regarding potential work opportunities.

When we think about employer and student perspectives during the work term, there is some potential for tension. From the student perspective, they want to contribute to the organization, but they also want to learn new skills and establish their professional network. From the employer perspective, there are new students coming in every four months and if the work they receive is not straightforward, organizations need to spend more time and resources training and supporting each new student.

One simple way to resolve the potential tension between the goals of the employer and the goals of the students: Vary the complexity and criticality of the tasks.

Ensure students have tasks that are critical to the operation of the team or unit (higher criticality), but easier to execute without error (lower complexity). Balance these tasks with work that is more challenging or complex (higher complexity), but only when they present less risk for the organization (lower criticality). Find variety across these types of tasks and establish a role where students can contribute productively to the organization and continue developing their skills.

At Waterloo, we also examined students’ Rate My Work Term responses from Winter 2021 to see if there was a correlation between student interest in returning to a co-op job or organization after graduation and the types of opportunities they were provided on their work term.

Results show that students were more likely to recommend a co-op job or organization to a friend or fellow student when they had opportunities to make meaningful contributions at work and opportunities to develop new skills. Additionally, students who received opportunities to expand their professional network and learn and develop new skills were also more likely to express interest in returning to work with a specific organization after graduation.

At the same time, students have reported fewer opportunities to expand their professional network during remote work. While the individual needs to take initiative and to reach out to make those connections, organizations have an opportunity to support early career talent by assigning mentors or creating a culture with opportunities to meet more people within the organization.