Cultivate Young Professionals

According to a study by the experience management firm Qualtrics and the venture capitalist firm Accel, 83 percent of millennials say they are satisfied at their current job, but 46 percent expect to change jobs in the next 12 to 18 months. If you are a practice leader, the idea that even happy young professionals in your organization could still be contemplating changing jobs is scary. 

Millennials as a group are more willing to relocate for a new job than older employees and value opportunities to grow in their careers. While there are many reasons an organization may lose a promising up-and-coming young professional in an increasingly tight labor market, one reason practice leaders have a lot of control over is whether their young professionals will find opportunities to grow within their organization or whether they need to look outside your practice.  

Supporting younger employees with career development is an investment well worth making. Encourage them to take classes to learn new skills, such as the RBMA U course offerings, or attend conferences where they can meet others in their field. Tuition and conference registration reimbursement require little work from you and are easy ways to expand the growth opportunities millennial employees will find working for you. 

Making RBMA more millennial friendly is part of the reason why it recently launched its Young Professionals Group. The group expands on the RBMA’s already existing networking opportunities to create an online forum and conference events specifically designed to let young professionals in radiology connect with others at the same stage in their careers.

“We wanted to create a group that would help make RBMA more welcoming to young professionals in our field and help guide them through all that the RBMA has to offer,” says Kim Kelley, chair of the eight-member Young Professionals Task Force.

The first Young Professionals event will be held on April 5 at the PaRADigm conference in San Diego. A 6:15 to 7 p.m. reception at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront hotel will lead into a pub crawl through the nearby Gaslamp Quarter led by Young Professionals Group members.

If you have a young professional within your organization that you are developing, leverage your own RBMA membership to help them, Kim encourages. Not only is it a way to “pay it forward” for the opportunities you found through mentoring and association membership in your own career, but it could actually help you retain your best young employees.