Welcome to The Vibe! This is a new initiative born out of a desire to share some of what we learn through the work we do. Each week we are lucky enough to get small glimpses into the worlds of our clients, giving us a sense of some of the trends and emerging issues people are facing. We also read, watch and listen to a lot of great (and some not so great) content, and want to share the best of it with you.

We hope you enjoy it. We’d love to know what you think, and what else you’d like to hear about. Please feel free to share it with friends and colleagues.

How to Keep your Grads

It’s grad season, the time of year when many of our clients are inducting their newest, freshest recruits. The investment in attracting and recruiting grads is significant, but how do you make sure they fit into their already established teams and stick around to become high performers and future leaders in your business? While some of our clients enjoy outstanding retention of grads, others retain as few as 15% within 2 years of the completion of the grad program. What a waste.

Over the last week we’ve worked with a few different grad groups doing our Positive Impact program. This program was inspired by some of the challenges our clients were observing grads experience, ranging from misunderstandings between grads and older team members as a result of generational differences, to more extreme brand-damaging behaviour (such as one grad who asked his HR Manager if she could take care of his dry cleaning… career-limiting move).To keep your grads, some practical tips:

1. Feedback and coaching is key. Grads need feedback not just about tasks and outputs but also about how they work with others. A big part of their learning curve is about stakeholder management and influencing, rather than the technical.
2. Create opportunities for social interaction. Grads tend to blur the lines between professional relationships and friendships, perhaps more than older generations. They want these meaningful social connections and thrive in environments which enable this.
3. Ask them for their opinion, especially in areas they are likely to know more about than more experienced members of the team.

Get Listening: 3 of the Best Business Communication Podcasts

We are well and truly addicted to podcasts here at Milan Partners. If you are yet to jump on board, now is the time. For the uninitiated, think of podcasts as reading for busy people. These are three of the best in the realm of business to entertain and inspire you during your commute:​

1. HBR Ideacast – This is like having someone read out all the best bits of the HBR, especially the Condensed Issue episodes which give an executive summary of each article in the magazine. Other episodes focus on issues and topics which are highly relevant and timely. Recent episodes include Closing the Strategy-Execution Gap and How to Give Constructive Feedback.
2. The Public Speaker – This practical podcast actually focuses on much more than just public speaking in a formal sense. Popular episodes include The Best Ways to Say ‘No’ and How to start a Conversation. Bit-sized offerings with real practical advice.
3. The McKinsey Podcast – McKinsey describes this podcast as ‘conversations with experts on issues that matter most in business and management’. Recent episodes focus on design thinking, well-being at work, and creating a digital mindset.