What does it take to inspire and engage Gen Y employees? Our Hong Kong sales and marketing manager, Becky Lai, outlines how to leverage young talent with “The Four Cs” as they enter the workforce in an informative article called “Kids these Days” for Mix Magazine.
In this article Becky outlined the key 21st century skills that are key for young people to develop good workplace practises and effective learning strategies.
Communication
Kicking off with communication. Being able to express your opinion is important, however, equally imperative is the ability to listen attentively and without prejudgement to another person's opinions. This takes skill and practise. Onboarding team building activities such as Team Building Asia's Speak Up Speak Out really encourage young people to get their opinion across and listen to the opinions of others.
Creative Thinking
Being creative. Having the ability to think outside the box. This can be seemingly easy but coming up with something unique within given parameters again takes practice. Self confidence in one's abilities to come up with great ideas is also important. Learning that in the process of ideation all thoughts and ideas are valid.
Collaboration
The ability to work together with others to achieve a common goal is vital in current work places. Its all too easy to work in a silo and avoid sharing information or delegate tasks thinking no one can do them as well as you can. Working with others takes time to develop trust and confidence in the group. Knowing the rules of engagement are important too to group dynamics to ensure everyone can work together, voice opinion and share without the thought of being ridiculed. Team building activities which place participants in a situation that is far from the norm are a great way of highlighting collaboration. The Big Picture and Chain Reaction Table Top which requires people to work in teams and then for teams to work together in order to create a final creation are globally, proven effective concepts.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking takes practise. It requires the ability to analyse, separating an issue into parts to discover their function and interconnected relationships. Keen critical thinkers seek information, apply logical reason, are great at predicting and transforming knowledge.
