The month of June in South Africa represents a time to celebrate the youth who were involved in the 1976 Soweto Uprising. It’s an opportunity to pay homage to learners who stood up against the then apartheid government, thus granting us the freedoms we enjoy today.
In the Quarnede Stories blog series, we told stories of the team members working at Quarphix. Part of our team is made up of young people who are essentially spending their most valuable years learning and refining their talents within the company. As an IT company operating in an ever-changing and highly competitive industry, the input by our younger colleagues continues to keep us ahead of the game.
Over the past twenty years, with business operations increasingly moving towards digital-based platforms, it’s become important for companies to hire the right mix of young and senior employees. In addition, introducing a young person to a team presents an opportunity for them to develop skills that will help them grow, work better and collaborate with diverse teams – while potentially introducing a new dimension to problem solving for the company. Younger employees, when provided the right platform, tend to have paradigm shifting ideas that introduce novel ways of looking at the world. Likewise, older teammates can get a chance to be mentors and guide the execution of these ideas using their life-long experience in the their respective fields.
In celebrating youthful energy and creativity, here are some cool benefits of working with younger colleagues:

They are technologically savvy
The youth today have largely grown up with technology in their hands. A blend between experienced and younger colleagues can result in exchanges of information and knowledge which can lead to exceptional execution of life changing solutions.

Social Media Fluency
Still on technological advances, social media has long become an important way to communicate for businesses and employees alike. And due to the reach and power customers now have through social media platforms, it’s also contributed to more transparency in business processes, products and services as companies are now obliged to share more of this information which was previously “confidential” during pre-internet days.

They have wider networks
The world is smaller because of the internet and with young people having grown up in that connected world, they’re likely to make friends who live in different parts of the world. Their relationships don’t only consist of groups of people from one setting, which broadens their conversations, perspectives and the ideas they adopt about the world they live in. This phenomenon could be helpful to companies as a way of gaining insight – in real time – into how people in other parts of the world develop themselves and get work done.

They exude expression
Younger colleagues tend to not be afraid to speak up. This part of their persona can be useful in creative roles. It can also be helpful when it comes to generating honest feedback within a team in order to improve output. Employers can tap into this type of bold expression and ideas to generate new ways of working for their organisations.
One of the ways Quarphix works with and develops young people is through our graduate training program. The program aims to provide a learning platform for young graduates to further develop their skills and get a head start in the IT industry. We value their input and place them in meaningful work, aligned to their specialty, that they’ll look back on in years to come and have a sense of pride for what they’ll have achieved during their time with us.