School Mentality vs Work Mentality?

In this post, we continue the discussion with accountancy firm Beever and Struthers regarding the challenges apprentices and employers face in the transition from the education to the working environment.

Partnership  - Beever and Struthers
Aside from time management and discipline, what is main difference between the school mentality and work mentality?
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From my perspective as a HR person, I think biggest is how schools have changed, and we as employers have to take on more of a counselling type role than we would have had to have done previously, because that’s kind of what they get in schools now. In my day, there was no such thing as assistance to help you if going through problems or whatever, cool-out rooms, or whatever it may be...

There is now more of an expectation that this becomes more of the role of the employer. There is a lot of talk in HR media about well-being programmes and welfare. It can be frustrating because often students want to come and off-load all their personal issues, but we don’t have the time for that, because we have a business to run, and clients to serve and none of us really are trained to counsel students…
​We are quite surprised that there are more displays of emotion from students that we are having to cope with.

The other big thing is the commerciality side of it. They sometimes struggle to see that they have a piece of work to complete in a certain amount of time, and that they need to sit down and just get it done. There is a tendency, unless they are actually pushed, to think they can take their time. They need to learn the mindset that you need to get things done within a certain timeframe. This takes a while to sink in for some people. ​