There were no first-day jitters about getting lost when my internship at CNN International started in September 2020. I sat at a desk in my bedroom, and I already knew where to find the fridge. It was a similar experience in 2021 as my second internship, at Mercury LLC, was also fully remote.
During the past two years, employers have faced a steep learning curve as they developed remote offerings for interns and trainees. Now a second shift is on the way — applying what was learnt in delivering virtual internships to make the most of a hybrid future.
“Getting across the values of the firm can be difficult to do remotely and virtually if they [the interns] are logging on and logging straight off and being by themselves,” says Cathy Baxter, UK head of talent engagement at PwC, the professional services firm.
Employers aimed to help interns feel as much a part of the team when working from home as they would in the office. PwC, for instance, organised a session with British astronaut Tim Peake, using a virtual reality platform where attendees created avatars and interacted with each other. “We tried to relate his experiences [in space] back to how we are all working virtually,” says Baxter. The question-and-answer event was arranged as a way to help the interns “engage and be part of the team”.
One-off events like this ran alongside traditional forms of support for young workers at PwC. These included assigning “buddies” to internship participants, as well as holding coaching sessions so students could consider what they wanted to achieve from the programme and set objectives, according to Baxter.
At Deloitte, summer internships are usually based in London or regional offices. During the virtual experience, candidates selected an office location but they did not need to be nearby, which improved the geographical diversity of applicants. According to Charlotte Winderam, Deloitte’s programme and operations lead for early careers recruitment, “over 96 per cent of students say that the virtual placement has met their expectations or exceeded what they expected.”
“I don’t think I missed out or felt disadvantaged,” says Rhiannon Francis-Clarke, who completed Deloitte’s virtual summer scheme and secured a graduate role for 2022.
When my internship at the Financial Times started last summer, it was hybrid, which had a lot of advantages. Going to the workplace helped me establish professional relationships, and hear ideas discussed and shared across the physical (although then socially distanced) desks.
The opportunities for chance networking were also important: even though the office was not busy, I made contacts beyond my direct team. The informality also meant it was less intimidating to approach busy colleagues. As offices fill up again this year, and some normality returns, this unlikely benefit of the pandemic will probably be lost for interns.
There is also something important about going into a workplace and meeting new people. “I found it refreshing to get out of the house,” says Felicity Deaney, who completed a hybrid summer internship with marketing agency Motive. “I think in-person learning is invaluable.”
A hybrid model is beginning to take shape as a future format for internships.
The 2022 summer programme at Pinsent Masons, for example, will probably be hybrid, according to Deborah McCormack, the law firm’s head of early talent. “We are all going to be working in a hybrid way,” she notes. “We are not all going to be in the office 100 per cent [of the time].”
Graduate employers’ experience of developing virtual internships will inform the hybrid future. At Deloitte, for example, Winderam says one of the key lessons has been to build in “more of a focus on pastoral care and having structured regular check-ins with buddies and champions within the teams that the students join”.
At Pinsent Masons, McCormack is examining what tasks are better done in person, and what can be completed virtually. The 2022 summer programme will consist of “social stuff in the office [like] a kind of insight office tour . . . [and] some tasks that can be undertaken virtually.”
Employers must carefully consider which remote work to assign to interns and which tasks would be best undertaken in an office, says Lizzie Crowley, senior skills policy adviser for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the UK professional body for HR staff.
Like all aspects of hybrid working in 2022, making a flexible approach work for interns requires hard work and planning from employers. In particular, they will need to help young workers faced with the new reality where, as Crowley points out, it is “difficult to form deeper kinds of social connections and networks”.
Virtual internships were a learning curve — now the future is hybrid
Pinoy Variant