Inclusion of cultural differences and motivation of Work-From-Home student interns for retention

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to design and execute a study to solve an internal organizational problem such as the retention of student interns in a unit of IBM. This was done focusing on how to incentivize their sense of belonging in the workplace, rooted in the inclusion of cultural differences that exist in a team made up of members from different countries. IBM is an international organization, a leader in the IT sector that operates by business units composed of employees from different cultural backgrounds, and therefore it is common that teams have collaborators from several parts of the world. As of 2020, the Technical Support Services (a branch of the organization) for Spanish South America and Mexico region was facing a set of challenges. Workers were performing their jobs remotely via technological tools such as Webex and Slack, and there was a need for inclusion of new teammembers like the student interns and a need for creating a sense of belonging and maintaning workers motivated. The leaders of the unit expressed a desire to retaint student interns and transform them into regular employees at the end of their internship. Therefore, the gap between the current situation and the desired situation is to incentivize student intern cultural inclusion and sense of belonging to the team in order to retain them and convert them into regular workers. The company objective is to increase the amount of interns that are regularized within the unit by 2 per year. A literature review on cultural differences, remote workers, and retention (and intern retention) was done to gather insights on success stories and the factors that might motivate student interns to remain within the organization. It was found that Among with this, a survey was done to obtain the perceptions and data of current interns. The review pointed out that Generation-Z workers (the current generation entering the workforce) has new and different needs than those of past generations, focusing on health, structure, democratized learning, possibilities for personal growth and emotional support. Managers need to adjust their ways to turn these priorities into key factors that will make interns want to remain within the organization. After conducting interviews with the unit manager and the leader of the student program, and comparing it with the findings of the student intern survey it was found that there were three main issues to tackle. The one that was found that should be tackled first was Integrating and including new team members to the unit to retain them, which is proposed to be solved by Virtual meetings. A financial underpinning of what this would entail was done, resulting in the policy recommendation that it is ideal to put the plan into action.