ESSENTIAL BUSINESS SKILLS

DEVELOPMENT

FOR YOUR YOUNG

EMPLOYEES

Young people with the right skills make great employees.

A graduate-style development programme will help you recruit and retain the very best young people.

With one in four graduate employees likely to leave

their employer within 12 months of joining, how sure

can you be that your young employees will stay with you?

Four of the top reasons that employees give for leaving their job

are the

lack of genuine interest in their development.

lack of skills development and opportunities to utilise

their skills, expertise and abilities.

lack of recognition for the contribution they make.

lack of career progression and promotion.

Providing your young employees with a graduate-style

development programme will help considerably with

addressing these issues.

It will decrease the likelihood that your young employees

will resign in the early stages of their career and

prevent the disruption and inconvenience that

that can bring to your organisation.

Gary Weinstein

Founder of the GradStart® programme

Managing Director, Akonia Ltd

What our clients’ say:

“Lucy Electric is an inclusive business that believes in its people.

As such we need staff development programmes which are wide-ranging and challenging in order to bring out the

best in our people.

I am very pleased to have discovered GradStart®, whose programme offers a depth and breadth of business skills subjects to

enhance the knowledge and capabilities of our young graduate engineers, and developed their self-confidence, working relationships

and understanding of our business.

The programme has also enhanced our ability to retain these young employees in the business.

We are delighted with the transformation that the programme has brought about in the young employees who have

already attended it.

We will be booking more onto future programmes.”

Caroline, HR Business Partner, Lucy Electric

2 Akonia Ltd GradStart®

Develop

Employer benefits

Stand out from the crowd.

With only half of large employers and just 1 in 9

SMEs currently providing a graduate programme,

you have a great opportunity to differentiate your

organisation by offering a graduate-style development

programme, and attract top calibre graduates.

Bridge the gap between your young employees’

academic studies and the reality of the world of work.

Rapidly integrate your young employees smoothly into

their team and department, and benefit from their

contribution quicker.

Accelerate performance from new recruits, and

make them more productive.

Retain employees thereby avoiding massive

costs in terms of both time and money:

advertising for a replacement;

sifting through mountains of CVs;

interviewing, inducting and training.

Akonia Ltd 3 GradStart®

Differentiate

“With discussions based on real workplace

problems, the GradStart® programme offered

a safe environment to explore and address these

issues.

It was these discussions that helped me to develop

as an individual through increased self-awareness and

a greater appreciation of my colleagues.”

Jacqui, Engineering Project Leader

“The GradStart® programme has proved to be a great forum

for proposing and discussing workplace problems, and creating

an environment to address and explore them.”

Adrian, Account Executive

“My aim is eventually to move to management so I think what has

been most useful for me is understanding how the emotional side

works and how to interact with people on a more professional

level.”

Dexter, Engineer

“I was uncertain as to why the course was necessary

and having now experienced it, I completely

understand why many young graduates can

benefit from exactly this form of training.”

Nathan, Law Graduate

What our students’ say:

Financial awareness

Many experienced business people do not

understand the basics of business finance and

terminology, and struggle to understand what a

financial report is conveying.

How much more so for young employees?

It is essential that your young employees are taught

the fundamentals of business finance and key

indicators of business performance and

health, at an early stage in their

career.

Industry intelligence

Your young employees will learn about your

industry sector and competitors; look at where and

how your organisation fits in, and what drives it.

Your young employees will be challenged with the

question “where is your industry going?” and taught

how to acquire and analyse industry insight.

Interpersonal behaviour

Helping your young employees to learn

how to behave personally and professionally

with others is essential in building relationships.

Knowing how to represent themselves through the way

they dress, their attitude to work and their interaction

with others, will make them good ambassadors

for your organisation and leave a good

impression with your clients.

Problem solving

Developing confidence and learning to trust

their problem-solving abilities will help your young

employees to make good decisions, and protect

the reputation of your organisation.

Being able to analyse a situation, formulate and

consider options, then assess the merits and

risks of each option, are critical skills your

young employees will have to apply

throughout their life and career.

4 Akonia Ltd GradStart®

Modules 1-5

Personal management

Your young employees must be able to manage

themselves effectively.

Employers, like you, require that their young employees

demonstrate good time-keeping, motivation and a

‘can-do’ attitude. Without this your young

employees won’t build effective

relationships and become the

future leaders that you want.

Communications

The effective use of language—written,

verbal and physical—will help shape your young

employees destiny and identity, and showcase their

leadership potential.

Presenting to a large audience, developing one to one

relationships, writing reports or simply using e-mail

effectively are all skills that highly effective

leaders need.

Leadership

Understanding how leadership differs

from management by identifying and examining

the qualities and attributes of role models in leadership

will provide powerful insights for your young employees

as they develop their own leadership style and behaviours.

Leadership is responsible for change in an organisation

to help it survive and grow, and your young

employees will learn about embracing

and supporting change.

Management

Your young employees need to develop

good management skills as they are promoted

into increasingly more responsible positions within

your organisation.

Teaching them how to set objectives and goals; to plan,

estimate and monitor projects and tasks; and to

manage others will provide useful insights as

they develop their own management

style and behaviours.

Customer awareness

Knowing how the sales cycle works, and

how sales-people build relationships with clients

will help your young employees learn the difference

between gaining sales and losing them.

Learning about contractual commitments and how

to negotiate, will ensure they understand the

boundaries within which your organisation

operates profitably.

Team working

Every day your young employees interact

with other people.

Knowing how to engage and work with others

effectively and efficiently to deliver projects to

schedule will make a crucial difference to the

long term health of your organisation.

Akonia Ltd 5 GradStart®

Modules 6-10

Employee benefits

Make engagement a priority.

How an employee feels about their job, and

how engaged they become, will depend upon a

combination of factors. This includes the value they

feel they contribute to the team, department and the

overall organisation, as well as the recognition they

receive from their peers, manager and senior executives.

It is critical that you engage your young employees in

their first year on the job.

See their self-confidence grow so they take more

initiative in the workplace.

Develop the ability to ask better, more critical

questions of the people they meet.

Develop essential skills that will form a solid

foundation on which to build their career.

Gain an understanding of leadership and how

to lead.

Increase career and promotion prospects,

and experience greater responsibility

and higher income.

6 Akonia Ltd GradStart®

Engagement

“The opportunity to examine different

scenarios and attitudes, offer perfect examples

of good and bad management, which have provided

the building blocks and guidelines to managerial

aspirations.”

Adrian, Account Executive

“Made me understand the bigger picture for my company,

and has made me see how the top positions operate and what

stresses they can be put under.”

Dexter, Engineer

“The course has certainly grown my confidence and assertiveness

in the work place.”

Bradley, Production Management Assistant

“Expanded my knowledge and awareness of the industry

sector, more than I have considered previously.”

Jacqui, Engineering Project Leader

What our students’ say:

Designed for young employees

GradStart® is designed for employees who

are new to the world of work. They don’t have

the benefit of your business experience, and therefore

the programme has taken this into account, and starts

from first principles.

Time and again on the GradStart® programme we have

found that young employees don’t know a PESTLE

analysis from a DISC profile, or Critical Path

Analysis from a Balance sheet, so the

programme has been carefully

designed with this in mind.

Comprehensive solution

Save effort, time and money.

No need to have the HR/L&D people who can

research and prepare a training plan made up of multiple

business skills courses. Neither do you need the expertise

to develop and deliver an internal programme.

The GradStart® programme is a comprehensive solution.

It covers everything your young employees need to

know about business skills. It does so in

less time and at lower cost than

other business skills courses.

Delivered from experience

Our GradStart® instructors have decades

of business experience and challenges, and an

abundance of scenarios and solutions which they

share in the classroom.

They were all once young employees themselves, and

later on managers of young employees.

Our instructors cite their personal business

‘war’ stories as examples to illustrate their

point, and get their message across.

Low impact high intensity

Graduates of the GradStart® programme

agree that conducting each day-long module

approximately one month apart provides them the

optimal time for pre-session preparation and post-

session consolidation, without impacting their

today-to-today business duties.

Each session is intensive to be able to delve sufficiently

into the module topics and give your young

employees a good understanding of

essential business tools

and techniques.

Broadening their horizons

Clients tell us that one of the best things

about the GradStart® programme is the opportunity

for their young employees to learn with a cohort who

are going through similar experiences.

By sharing their experiences, your young employees

grow in confidence in the knowledge that they are

not alone. Your young employees will learn

techniques for handling those

experiences better in future.

Why?

Akonia Ltd 7 GradStart®

© 2016

About Akonia

We are experts at helping organisations to develop essential business skills in their

young—typically graduate—employees.

We work with directors, HR and training managers who struggle to attract top

calibre young people to their organisation and retain them for the long term.

Many organisations are put off recruiting young people altogether because of their

lack of experience. They agree that most young people are not ready for the world

of work and therefore are concerned how to develop them.

Employers would like young employees who:

add value to the organisation

have a good work ethic

show commitment to getting the job done

demonstrate good communication skills with colleagues and clients.

What separates our service from other training providers is that we are dedicated

to developing the potential of young employees through our unique and

comprehensive graduate-style development programme, known as GradStart®.

Our clients save time and money by removing the need to recruit an in-house

training team, and avoid the time-consuming hassle of sourcing, purchasing and

managing multiple business skills courses.

Freephone: 0800 619 9697

Email: info@akonia.com

Website: www.akonia.com

More about GradStart®

For more information about the GradStart® programme and how much it costs

telephone 0800 619 9697 or email info@akonia.com

For the dates of the next GradStart® programme and to register your interest to

participate in it: www.akonia.com/GradStart-Schedule

Download this GradStart® programme brochure: www.akonia.com/GradStart

To find out how to improve your employee development strategy, or how to

integrate GradStart® into your internal young employee development programme

then request a call at www.akonia.com/Emp-Dev-Call or by telephoning

0800 619 9697 and we will arrange a time convenient for you.