Fusion Development – our delivery update

It has been a busy but extremely exciting few months on the development front at Fusion with inductions happening across the country. Fusion have had the opportunity to work with small intimate graduate cohorts ranging in size from eight-to-30 up to larger cohorts of 130 graduates. Each group, no matter the size, provides challenges and opportunities to prepare graduates for their transition to business life.

Intimate group for the Westpac Graduate induction
Intimate group for the Westpac Graduate induction

The majority of clients Fusion has worked with have taken their graduate programs to the next level in 2017 and have incorporated senior leaders speaking on aligned key themes with a link to the learnings outcomes, networking events and site tours where appropriate. These great initiatives, teamed with both a face-to-face development element and online support through GradPassport has seen these clients lead the way.

Graduate inductions have been all about graduates ‘Getting Established’ on their journey and setting them up for ultimate success, and that is the reason behind the modules that we have been delivering in the first quarter of the year.

In tailoring these programs for specific clients there has been a number of common themes that we have been asked to focus on, which has resulted in some fantastic results.
Transitioning to Business Life has been an area of major concentration for many graduate managers. We all know graduates are ‘green’ when they first walk through corporate doors, the ability for them to then understand the differences between student life and working life is key and a personal transition plan ensures a smooth transition to corporate life.
Personal Brand and Networking with Confidence have also been extremely popular with graduate managers and it is obvious why. The Grad survey listed these as the top important soft skills they would like to develop but these are integral stepping stones to success in the workplace.

Understanding the elements of their personal brand and how to strategically construct and manage those to understand how their values and motivations impact on their personal brand all play a part – whether that be their face-to-face personal brand or their online presence.

Jum Lamont – Development Programs Manager, presenting the Australia post induction
Jum Lamont – Development Programs Manager, presenting the Australia post induction

Scary, nerve-wracking and terrifying, are just some of the words graduates use when it comes to networking. Therefore, it has been important to help identify and use networking opportunities for graduates and provide a structure and process around networking.

Popular international speaker Simon Sinek’s concept, everything ‘starts with why’, has been a fantastic tool to introduce to graduates when trying to break down the importance of Stakeholder

Engagement. A vital skill for graduates to have is the ability to understand, gain, engage and retain stakeholders and that has been done through helping them to build on relationship management and communication, and understanding needs versus wants.

Earlier this year, Sinek’s view on millennials took the internet by storm and has played a vital role in Graduate Manager Training too. Ensuring managers, sponsors and mentors are all on the page when it comes to working with and supporting their graduate cohort has led to a much smoother transition for the graduates.

Induction programs have not been limited to these modules, in fact, we have tackled many different issues with many different clients but this is a snap shot into the importance of graduates getting established on their journey.

Linda Tucknott - Graduate Manager of Mars at a Development induction
Linda Tucknott – Graduate Manager of Mars at a Development induction