Building a youth-friendly culture in a business or other place of work is a process that takes time and investment, and is everyone’s responsibility. Among those who are best placed to support youth-friendly practices are the line managers who will be managing your young employees on a day to day basis.
However, youth-friendly management requires a particular set of skills. In today’s post, we will share some tips that your organisation can use to equip your line managers with the skills they need to be youth-friendly.
Understand what youth-friendly employment looks like
Before you can prepare your line managers to be youth-friendly, you need to understand what youth-friendly employment looks like. What do young people want and what makes a great workplace for young people?
There are two main ways you can do this: by asking young people directly and by referring to the Good Youth Employment Standards.
Seeking input from young people
Your existing young employees, the young people who apply for jobs at your organisation, your interns and work experience students, and the young people in your wider community all have a wealth of knowledge, experience, and views to share with you if you are willing to listen.
Mechanisms such as informal conversations, formal interviews, focus groups, feedback forms and surveys, and online forums such as social media can all help you gain valuable insights into what makes a great youth-friendly workplace and what young people want and need from their managers.
Understanding the Good Youth Employment Standards
Created by the team at Youth Employment UK and with extensive input from young people, there are 10 Good Youth Employment Standards we believe employers should commit to. These are the standards every employer member commits to when they join our employer membership.
Read more about the Good Youth Employment Standards.
Lead by example
In order to equip line managers to be youth-friendly, your organisation needs to create a top-down youth-friendly culture. This means that everyone, from your senior leadership team downwards, should understand and embody the youth-friendly practices we explored in the last section.
Your task is to create an environment where youth voices are truly heard and valued and where young people’s needs are taken into consideration when creating your practices, policies, procedures, and values.
Provide comprehensive training
One mistake many organisations make is to promote people to management roles without adequate training. When you employ a new manager or promote someone to a management role, it is important to provide them with robust and comprehensive management training including training that specifically focuses on managing young employees.
Don’t forget about ongoing training and development, too. Management best practices change, and everyone can use a refresher from time to time. Why not host some training sessions (run by either an experienced member of your team or an external provider, as appropriate) specifically on the skills required to manage young employees well?
Provide mentorship for managers
Becoming a great manager requires a steep learning curve, and learning to be a youth-friendly manager requires an additional set of important skills. Therefore, your managers should have access to support and guidance from those with more experience.
When you think of “mentorship”, you likely think primarily of new and inexperienced employees. However, mentorship for managers from more experienced managers can also be tremendously valuable. A mentor can help a new manager to adapt to their new position, learn the skills they need, and troubleshoot issues with their team. A mentor can also be a source of moral support when needed.
Put young people in management roles
Sometimes the best managers for young people are other young people.
There is a common misconception that managers must be older than their employees in order to manage well and gain their respect, but this is not true at all. With the right experience and training, a good manager can be of any age. Therefore, when you are looking to hire or promote for a management role, don’t overlook young people.
Younger managers can also help to make your entire organisation more youth-friendly by providing a valuable youth voice amongst your leadership team.
Solicit feedback from your young employees
Seeking youth input does not stop with understanding what young people want and need from your organisation and their managers. Ideally, you should be seeking regular feedback from your young employees throughout their time with you.
Do they feel supported by their managers and the organisation? Do they feel understood, and heard? What would they like to change about their managers’ management styles or the organisation’s practices, if anything?
These insights can help you to understand where you are doing well and what you still need to improve in supporting your managers–and your entire organisation–to become more youth-friendly.
