New UMass Amherst Center for Employment Equity Report Reveals the 10 Keys to Hiring Young Workers in a Post-pandemic World

AMHERST, Mass. – Two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the nature of “work,” labor shortages are widespread, workers are expecting higher starting wages and – after employers hire and train a new employee – the risk that new hires will jump ship for a better paying job is probably the highest it has ever been. The cost of hiring the wrong candidate has never been higher. How can employers do a better job at hiring and retention?

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A new report published today by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Employment Equity (CEE) maps out 10 simple steps employers can take to help ensure that they bring aboard the right talent and keep them.

By conducting multiple focus groups with workforce development professionals – people who help employers find workers and young adults find jobs – from across the U.S., Reyna Orellana and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey not only discovered the typical mistakes employers make – sometimes over and over again – but also found that three main themes for successfully onboarding young workers became clear: placement and retention, employer practices, and discrimination.

Orellana, a doctoral candidate in sociology who is also studying for her master’s in accounting, and Tomaskovic-Devey, professor of sociology and CEE executive director, focus their report on what they see as working and what tends to fail when onboarding new young employees.

They found that the 10 lessons to help employers hire correctly are:

1. Create career jobs that offer living wages, sufficient hours, skill and wage progressions and – most importantly – respectful relationships with supervisors and co-workers.
    
2. Communicate opportunities for career progression to help new hires recognize the difference between short-term, dead-end jobs and jobs that lead to long-term careers.
    
3. Build positive relationships prior to hiring through practices like job shadowing, workplace tours and mock interviews.
    
4. Successful onboarding requires a positive first day reception; introductions to co-workers, supervisors and the boss are vitally important.
    
5. Assign new hires a mentor to help them learn both expected job skills and the informal culture of the workplace.
    
6. Communicate job and workplace cultural expectations clearly and with justification.
    
7. Create a trusting environment where potential employees can ask questions and solve problems.
    
8. To build relationships and reduce turnover, employers need to understand the lives of young workers.
    
9. Foster a workplace climate of respect and dignity for everyone.
    
10. Create a racially equitable and inclusive workplace.

Orellana and Tomaskovic-Devey say that they hope their report will help employers examine their hiring and onboarding practices, increase the speed at which new hires become productive team members and reduce the high financial and emotional cost of turnover from failed hires.

“In this environment of short-staffing and difficulty finding new employees, some firms are raising wages, offering more full-time positions, redesigning jobs to include better benefits, and offering signing bonuses,” Orellana and Tomaskovic-Devey write. “These are important, but so are more subtle aspects of onboarding, especially those having to do with developing mutual respect and trust between the employer and the new hire. Both employers and employees need hiring to be done right.”

The full report, “Onboarding Young Workers in a Post-Pandemic World,” is available online from the Center for Employment Equity.