Building great relationships with top young talent, and playing a meaningful role in transforming our next-gen workforce, go hand in hand. Andrew Allison, who heads up our corporate division, has been spending a considerable amount of time over the past few months learning from, and talking to, companies about how to best approach this critical process.

Hiring juniors right – Bursaries, Learnerships and Internships
Well-run and well-resourced businesses put substantial effort into hiring top-quality juniors. They then take time and to make sure that their young, hungry talent is acclimatised to the company’s values and culture, and are trained in its unique “ways of working”.

A rewarding relationship takes time (and planning)
The best companies start the journey of finding and hiring juniors months – and often years – in advance of signing them on as full-time employees. This gives both employer and employee an opportunity to court each other, so that when the moment comes for the two to “go steady”, there is already a committed, loving bond between them.

Two fantastic ways for companies to build great pre-employment relationships with top young minds are through bursaries and learnerships. In exchange for education, a prospective employee undertakes to work for the business after graduating (and ideally spends time in the business beforehand through holiday work, workplace learning or even just hanging out with future teammates).

Build a loyal, committed, engaged next-gen workforce
After graduation, the bursary student or learner can join the business full-time through its internship programme, where she or he will receive broad-based on-the-job training and a much deeper exposure to the business and its workings. A bursary student or learner will already be well-acquainted and committed to the business by the time they enter the internship programme, making their year or two as an intern even more fulfilling and productive.

Maximise your B-BBEE Skills Development ROI
Although bursaries, learnerships and internships differ in a number of respects (especially when it comes to B-BBEE Skills Development treatment, and SETA-accreditation and recognition), they can – and should – work closely together to help you attract, recruit and develop the best possible new entrants to your business.

And when your learnerships or internships are properly structured, you can count the salary costs of your learners or interns towards your B-BBEE Skills Development target!

Talk to us

Red & Yellow connects students and learners with employers, and helps businesses implement recruitment and training strategies for graduates and juniors. And we do so in a way that gives you the best possible B-BBEE “bang for buck”. Talk to us