Reverse Mentoring in Lansing

An article appeared online within the Wall Street Journal this morning entitled, Reverse Mentoring Cracks Workplace: Top Managers Get Advice on Social Media, Workplace Issues From Young Workers by Leslie Kwoh. The link is here.

Three reputable companies, General Electric, Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard, have all been successful in implementation of a Reverse Mentoring program. Jack Welch from GE championed such an initiative a decade ago by pairing senior level managers with emerging professionals to learn how to surf the web. In today’s programs, these managers are learning about Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and more.

Why not have this here? In Lansing, we have a huge transient population of frustrated college graduates. It’s easy to find job postings, however each and every single one of local businesses either expects them to have extensive volunteer or “unpaid internship” experience in lieu of 3-5 years of experience in their respective field. Rather than chasing away our young, emerging professionals, why doesn’t Lansing step up to the plate and start some reverse mentoring of its own?

Imagine a Lansing that wants to retain these college graduates. Just because somebody may be studying Human Resources, don’t discount their knowledge of social media. Perhaps you could start a young professional out in a mentoring program to teach some of the more experienced marketing managers how to effectively use Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. Let’s say after a one year reverse mentoring program, the company then turns around and mentors that young professional for a year.

Can you see Blue Cross Blue Shield, Sparrow Health System and more jumping on this bandwagon? This would really benefit companies and emerging professionals alike. It builds a professional relationship and creates a commonality and purpose for both to exceed expectations.

Can you imagine that Lansing would be competitive within our state? Rather than having an out flux of our talented graduates migrating to Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, what if the new desire was to remain right here in the Greater Lansing area?

Let’s do this Lansing!

Business Dilemma on Hiring

The sad fact is that only cyclical unemployment is honed in on. What is scary is the fact that “discouraged” workers are not factored into our economic figures. What truly defines a “discouraged” worker after all? Is it simply a person that has exhausted their unemployment benefits, yet still is looking for work? If so, our unemployment numbers would be higher than currently recorded. Is our economy really improving or are more unemployed people falling off the radar since they are no longer considered to be within the cyclical unemployed and now considered to be “discouraged” and not part of the numbers? Keeping this in mind, what is holding back our local businesses from hiring?

Overhead costs, trimming the fat and trying to do more with less has been the way of Lansing businesses over the past several years. Downsizing and layoffs have become a normal business practice. Major cuts are typically made within the Human Resources Departments and result in reduced or elimination of training and development programs. While we are seeing an improvement within our economy, businesses are still functioning within the survival mode and waiting for more signs of the economic recovery before they start hiring.

Often times, businesses want to ensure that they are hiring candidates that are not going to require training. They desire people who have their college degrees and at least three to five years of experience within their respective field. In theory, this will prove beneficial to the company because they don’t have to worry about teaching a new candidate their job duties. This helps to “preserve” training dollars and the overall bottom line for the company while in survival mode.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have more experienced workers with years of experience on top of their degrees. I would welcome anyone within the Lansing Community to attend one of the Lansing Go Getters networking meetings on any given Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM within Capital Area Michigan Works! These talented professionals have been networking, taking classes, participating in Shifting Gears through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), networking and more. Yet, because of their many years of experience and partly because of their age, these folks are finding it extremely challenging to find a career here within the Lansing community. Perhaps its due to the fact that these companies do not want to spend out more for such highly skilled employees, thereby preserving their bottom line while still operating in survival mode.

The survival mode is not helping the sluggish economy and it’s time for companies to step outside of their comfort zone. It is time to move from beyond talking about creating jobs and actually stepping up to do something about it. While many jobs are being posted and there are several qualified applicants, the business community needs to lower the bar for hiring. I’m not suggesting that they decide not to hire a college graduate, but start being more flexible on the experience end. If you truly desire a person with more than seven years of experience, don’t dismiss a person that has fifteen or more.

Lansing can rebound into a thriving, competitive market. We as a community need to band together and start making things happen rather than just sitting on our hands waiting for the economy to rebound. It will never rebound if there is no action taken by our business community. I would like to challenge that every single business in Lansing hire one college graduate, one veteran and one older unemployed professional. That’s three jobs – one entry-level, one mid to senior level and another senior level. Imagine how many of our unemployed people we could get back into careers if every business in Lansing hired three people.