Good post!
As a nation I feel we have raised at least 2 generations of soft kids. They lack basic jobs skills and perhaps more importantly they lack the basic social skills for what is espected and acceptable in a work environment.
For the last 20 years I have seen far too many collage age kids who cry or scream in my office at a bad job performance review because they have never been told they are doing a task poorly. And held accountable for it. At one point 60% of kids we hired fell into this group.
They ignored routine coaching of their mistakes as if there were no consequences for failing to improve. Their entitled upbringing had taught them that dress codes and work schedules were optional for them. They had the arrogance to start talking about the need for a pay raise at their 30 day review even as you reviewed their short comings and offered training and coaching to help them.
They were expecting more money, yet they ignored advice and guidance from others, never asked questions and never accepted help when they were obviously over their head with the task at hand. When their 90 day review came up they were crushed when they were not hired permanently because of a poor performance review. Something had to be done or the company would pay down the road as people retired.
You see an employee age gap had developed where we had no supervisors in their 20s capable of moving up into management jobs as people in their 30s and 40s got promoted.
Pushed into a corner by what was seen as a combination of a poltically correct society driven failed education system and poor parenting, they started doing paid high school internships coordinated with a new charter school about 10 years ago. The charter school demanded parental participation in the kids learning.
To this day they teach parents good parenting skills while the paid internships help teach the kids about the responsibilities expected at a real world job.
Today most of our lower and mid level supervisors are 19 to 24 year olds who came out of that program.
