One of the best ways to invest in an employee and watch them improve and grow is to start with them when they are interns. Many companies offer internships to help those who want to start their career in a certain field, some companies also offer a full-time position after the internship if the intern showed great development and improvement.
One of the effective ways to help your interns improve and earn more skills is to keep them engaged. Sometimes it is hard for interns to communicate or get used to the people and place, especially if they’re fresh graduates. So, you’ll be the one who’s responsible for making them feel comfortable.
Here are some tips to help you keep your interns engaged.
1- Show Them Around And Introduce Them To Everyone
The first thing you need to do is help them get familiar with the company and people.
Take them on a tour and let them know each place in the company and each department. While you’re showing them the place, introduce them to the teams even if they won’t be working with them; they need to feel that they are part of the company with its employees.
This will make them get used to the space and people around them.
2- Plan For Team Activities
Aside from work, get your interns to engage with the employees on a personal level.
Get your team and interns to communicate and discuss topics that are not work-related. You can plan some activities or games for them to participate in and you can make this happen once every week or two so you can all interact with each other.
You can plan a welcome party for the newcomers so your team and the rest of the employees know them and talk to them.
3- Be Ready With Their Tasks
Don’t let them sit there and wait, get them into the work mood.
Some employees recall their first internship and remember that they spent their first day completely clueless about what to do. Some even spend their first day doing absolutely nothing.
So, what you need to do is, have a meeting with them, explain the work process, and start assigning tasks. Also, make sure you don’t assign hard tasks on their first day.
4- Share Constant Feedback To help Them Improve
Your interns don’t have that much experience, so giving them feedback will help them meet your expectations.
Make sure you always give them your feedback and praise them when they do a good job. This will help them develop and improve their skills; they will also be able to know right from wrong and won’t repeat the same mistake twice.
Make sure you also ask them about their feedback, this is how you get to have two-way communication and get them to be more engaged.
Whether you’re managing a team of interns or not, you have to know that giving feedback is a strong factor in developing a team and will help your business move forward.
5- Include Them In Your Team
Let your team members share their experiences with them.
You can include the interns in your team meetings to know the work process and benefit from the brainstorming sessions. Also, you can let your seniors guide them through the whole internship to benefit more from the company’s employees.
In this sense, you will be providing them with experience and information that will help them thrive.
This will also encourage them to communicate better and share their opinions and come up with creative ideas.
6- Remember They’re Still Interns
Your interns are still in the learning process, so, go easy on them.
Don’t expect them to understand and be productive from the very first month, put into consideration that they’re still processing everything around them and the system with the workflow.
So, make sure you’re not pressuring them and deal with them as interns, not full-time employees.
Be patient and expect that they will do a lot of mistakes because this is when your role comes, you have to guide them and teach them how to avoid making these mistakes.
This is the beginning of your interns’ career, so, make it special and leave a positive impact.
