Take Our Kids to Work Day 2015
On Wednesday November 4th, many parents and their teens went to work together in support of career development planning for Canadian youth. Blu Ivy’s Stacy Parker brought her 14 year old daughter to work with us yesterday for Take Your Kids to Work Day and the results were remarkable. Read on for Maiya’s views on the state of Canadian worker engagement as seen through the eyes of our children.
Students Say Parents Are Unhappy and Overworked – Money Only Job Reward
Hi, my name is Maiya. I am currently in grade 9 and today I got to work with my mom at her company, Blu Ivy Group. I’ve always thought that I had ages to think about future careers but the more I’m introduced to the world around me, I realise that I have to start to thinking about my career now. In a year I will be able to get a part time job and in about 6 years I will be getting a full time job.
Today, while helping my mom with her work I conducted and analyzed a survey with high school kids to understand what their thoughts are on future employers and careers. I learned how similar we all are in our career interests, social media usage, and thoughts of what careers are like today. The people surveyed were aged 16-18 and included just over 50 high school students across North America.
Here are 4 key lessons for employers on what high school graduates care about. This talent will be the people you are looking to hire in the next four to six years!
What Teens Want Most in Our Careers
The stats that I picked up from the survey showed some very interesting results. The three most important factors to our generation in a future employment offering include:
Top 3 Things High School Students Want in a Future Career | |
Work Life Balance | 59% |
Making a Difference in People’s Lives | 49% |
Opportunity for Advancement | 34% |
*Close behind were a) a desire to be creative, b) having great vacation programs and c) working close to home.
Something that was interesting to both me and some of the Blu Ivy leaders is how few teens found the opportunity for international work and travel appealing. Only 17% of those surveyed wanted to travel with their jobs. From that I gathered that they would rather be with their family and friends than travel for work.
Our generation values more of a balance in our lives, doing work that matters and that we have a passion for. Watching our parent’s busy work and travel schedules, we have come to value more free time and time with family and friends.
The Companies and Careers of Greatest Interest to Teens Aged 14-18
When asked what industries students would most like to work at in the future, the top three fields were technology, education, and health care. A lot of kids are interested in technology companies like Google, Apple and Tesla. The careers they are interested in for this space are marketing, engineering and design. I found it very interesting that Tesla was so popular as an ideal company to students. Tesla has become known for their eco-friendly cars and have created and sold their company in a way that benefits people and the environment. This connects a lot with teens as they are very interested in careers that make a real difference in people’s lives.
There were a large percentage of teens also interested in teaching careers. Most said they wanted to be teachers in private or specialized schools as there was more opportunity and available resources.
The third most common career interest was in the medical field. Teens here envisioned careers as doctors, medical researchers and veterinarians.
How Teenagers View Work and Employment Issues Today
In the survey most of the students said that they felt that adults today are too focused on money and not about their happiness. Our generation of workers are not highly motivated by money. We want to make a difference and want to focus a much heavier balance on happiness in our jobs; we expect to enjoy our job and won’t give that up for money or status. The respondents also commented a lot about how there is a real issue today with how little adults enjoy personal time with their family because they are working around the clock.
The students want approachable leaders that are strong communicators and coaches. We want people that will challenge us, but also feel like they care about us developing into our best. A lot of people talked about wanting a good communicator. My feeling is that emails do not cut it for communication. I know personally after a hard day at school or when I need motivation my mom doesn’t send me an email and I suddenly feel better and ready to work. How an employer is going to communicate is by talking to them give a motivational speech after a long difficult week find out a cool way to connect and listen through social media. If the employer is able to connect to the employees the workplace will be a better, stronger community in the future.
How Teenagers Use Social Media Today and What We Predict for the Future
Social Media is a huge part of today’s society. In fact 60% answered this survey on their phones. This tells us that most of the ways that leaders and companies will need to communicate is throughout devices.
Almost every teen is using multiple social media channels regularly through the day. My guess is that we are spending off and on about 4 hours a day on social media and it is our main form of learning about current events and the world around us outside of school.
The most popular form of social media is Facebook with 38% of the surveyed using it. The second most popular is Instagram at 25%. We do recognize that not all the social media platforms will remain popular and we don’t care as we get bored with various platforms and move on quite comfortably. Surprisingly 31% thought that Facebook would disappear in a few years and only 8% percent thought Instagram would fade away. This means that companies will need to use a lot of different platforms and will need to be comfortable to change platforms regularly and quickly. One key learning my mom pointed out is that none of the teenagers mentioned LinkedIn as a social platform. This means that if companies want to connect with teens to make them aware of careers, jobs and employers before they graduate from high school, they need to be more effective at using the social platforms we are on most often today.
What I Learned Working at Blu Ivy Group for Take Your Kids to Work Day
From this project I learned about how important my generation will be, and how common our passions and views are on careers and employers. I feel that employers need to remind themselves that this generation has grown up in a world where parents are always connected to work, and are highly disengaged. Watching them has taught us to be even more focused on having a career that matters and fits into a whole life. Yes I am only in grade 9 but doing this survey, analyzing the results and talking about what it means for our future careers was really interesting and an amazing experience. I feel like I know more about what is to come in my career and what to prepare for. I had a great day at Blu Ivy Group and found it really interesting work because it can help companies do a better job making work better for employees and our communities.
Maiya Parker
Grade 9, Etobicoke School of the Arts
About Blu Ivy Group
Blu Ivy Group is a leading employer branding and employee engagement consultancy that aligns your organization with contemporary workplace paradigms. Blu Ivy Group’s mission is to help client’s build award-winning people practices, inspire extraordinary employee engagement, and cultivate unique and desirable workplaces.
Blu Ivy Group provides integrated solutions in employer brand and engagement research, strategic consulting, employer brand integration, creative and talent communications.
Blu Ivy Group is a trusted partner to many of North America’s most respected employer brands. For more information, go to www.bluivygroup.com . For questions about this blog or employer branding, please contact Stacy Parker at sparker@bluivygroup.com