Internships have experienced a popular rise in recent years, particularly amongst those career fields such as the arts that lack the funds for full-time, permanent roles.

But it isn’t just the interns that need the experience; businesses are increasing strapped to find the right talent & skills needed. While Ireland remains on the cusp of full employment, this multiple industry skills shortfall isn’t set to disappear any time soon.

Summer is upon us, schools and universities have finished up, and so too are its students & alumni. Why not fill those skills, give young talent an opportunity to develop their experience, and attract your future employees by offering robust and valuable internships? Check out why internships are important for your business, and the pitfalls to avoid.
 
Why An Intern?

• Performance Upkeep

As Summer holidays begin, many of your permanent staff may be looking forward to switching off and catching some rays somewhere for a week. But what about your performance?

While it may only be temporary, if a business is without several team members, productivity can slip and lead to customers or clients becoming unhappy.

Having a trained intern or two already available can help to level off some of this loss, and ensure your business keeps up its performance throughout the Summer period.

• Talent Gaps

On the other hand, Ireland has never been as close to full employment. Compared to 16% when the recession hit hard, unemployment now stands at an all-time-low of 4.4%, according to the Central Statistics Office.

Businesses across the island are finding it increasingly hard to attract talent, with competition driving up wage bills as a result.

Implementing internships can grab great talent early and give your business the opportunity to ‘sell’ and prove itself with these candidates. This will only make it easier to retain this talent permanently in the future.

• Fresh Perspective

Giving a candidate an internship will help them to learn new skills and develop a greater experience in your sector. However, an intern can also provide a fresh perspective and valuable feedback on your organisation from the ground up.

Whether it’s their views on the management model, to the training that they have received, this retrospect will only help improve your business and operations.
 
Pitfalls To Avoid
While internships are great for your business, it is important to tread carefully.

• No Pay, No Way!

Young candidates are growing increasingly weary of poorly paid or unpaid internships as a sign that your business will not offer practical experience, and that you do not care for your interns and the skills that they can bring.

Put simply, people are fed up working for free. In our low-level unemployment environment, young candidates will go elsewhere in their hunt for new skills and fair pay. Offering a reasonably paid internship will reap the best talent and the maximum benefits for your business.

• Poor Preparation

Whether you forget they are coming, fail to have a designated staff member to mentor them, or you haven’t enough tasks for them to work on, an internship can quickly become a boring exercise of administration.

While it might be great to get some tedious databases cleaned up, an intern won’t see it that way. Instead, they will view your business as disorganised and a negative place to work, leading to a poor word-of-mouth reputation when that intern returns to University during the next term.

Poor preparation for an internship will leave you without your skills gaps filled, while the Intern will fail to learn anything new or valuable, resulting in a waste of both time and opportunity.
 
Time for Skills, Time for Interns
The talent crunch is on. It’s time that you use your HR department to address this, seek out the skills that you need and implement robust, valuable internships that will reap these skills and introduce new talent to your business.

​Ensuring internships offer fair pay, a great experience and a valuable opportunity for professional skills development will attract the best candidates that could form part of your future workforce. 

Taking what I imagine was a very welcome break from the Brexit saga, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke at Inspirefest 2016’s opening ceremony on Thursday, where he rightly reminded attendees of the EU’s motto ‘Unity in Diversity’ and the advantages that diversity brings both to the workplace and society.

While the focus of his speech was very much geared towards STEM and the tech sector in particular, the points he made hold true across all industries. Core to this is the fact that ‘We don’t get inspired surrounding ourselves with people who are the same as us.’ Rather ‘…we are inspired by those who are different, who think differently, who have lived different lives, who have overcome different challenges.’

In essence is what diversity is all about. It’s not just about him v’s her or young v’s old or anything else like that. It’s about people from different backgrounds, experiences, sharing their different perspectives to create a fuller, more thought-out approach to all faculties of our business, from manufacturing processes to customer relations.
Below are some helpful tips for improving diversity in the workplace:

1.Conduct a Diversity Audit
If you’re looking to enhance the diversity of your work force, then you need to understand where it currently sits and where the gaps need to be filled. Breakdown the metrics on your staff – gender, nationality, age, education, career background, etc. What you’re aiming for is a workforce that matches the communities you operate in.

2.Adjust Your Hiring Process
If your audit uncovers any areas that are out of kilter with the balance you wish to achieve, then it’s important to look at your hiring processes and make adjustments where necessary. Where do you source your candidates from, what criteria must they meet, and so forth? Engaging with local community groups and networks can be an excellent way of identifying and attracting new employees, with different backgrounds that you otherwise might have overlooked.
Another effective way to limit innate, natural bias (we all subconsciously have prejudices that effect our decision making process) is to develop and utilise evaluation forms that score candidates based on set criteria.

3.Introduce a Mentorship/ Sponsor Programme
Even the most well intentioned managers can sometimes overlook incredible talent. We’re social beings and we gravitate and spend most of our time with those most like us. Setting up a mentorship or sponsor programme, with clear objectives and timescales can establish greater integration between senior and junior members of staff, while helping spot real business talent that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

4.Get Flexible
While this might not be feasible for all employers, providing a more flexible working environment can help your business attract and retain quality employees. Practices such as remote working and flexi-time, shift the focus from attendance to performance. So long as the job is done well, does it matter whether it was done at the employee’s desk or on their couch? Facilitating these kinds of practices are particularly important for women in the labour market, who might have decided to start a family. An added benefit is that various studies have shown they also reduce overheads, sick days and attrition.

5. Train and Indoctrinate
A top down approach must be applied if your company is to embrace diversity. Employees look to their team leaders, managers and employers and so we must set the tone from the outset. Improving diversity isn’t just about getting a few more women or foreign nationals on the payroll; it’s a cultural shift that must be afforded the attention it needs.

Training is a key part of this. As with any cultural change, employees must be 100% on board with what you are trying to achieve. They must see the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of what you’re doing and understand the role they play in bringing it to fruition.

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