Skip to main content

Newsroom

Andrew Shepardson and Susan Brennan

A recent Gallup study done in connection with Purdue University finds that a college graduate’s workplace engagement and personal well-being can be more closely tied to how you go to school  — the relationships you form and the student organizations and internships you participate in — than where you go to school.

The Gallup-Purdue Index research shows that most people are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their work. On the other hand, when you have employees who are engaged in what they’re doing and committed to doing their best work, you have a better workforce and ultimately greater retention and more productivity. Worker engagement and satisfaction makes good business sense.

Bentley partnered with Gallup to understand the levels of well-being and workplace engagement of our alumni and students. The findings show our alumni fare better on both measures.

From the time students first step foot on campus (and in many cases before they even get here), we emphasize the importance of them knowing their strengths.  All new students — graduate and undergraduate — at Bentley take the StrengthsFinder assessment that helps them identify what comes naturally to them and allows them to be their best every day. Within their first year on campus, students will have participated in peer-led strengths discussions as well as engaged with strengths in the curriculum through the Career Development Introduction (CDI) class developed by Career Services. By the end of their first year, students are able to articulate their strengths and are more comfortable talking about them and able to weave them into their personal story and job search through cover letters, résumés, or their LinkedIn profile.  

During their sophomore year, Strengths is infused in the general business curriculum, allowing students to explore how their individual strengths impact a team.

Learning Outside the Classroom

However, the learning does not stop inside the classroom. Students have a variety of leadership roles at Bentley and now have the opportunity to reflect upon, develop, and hone their strengths within their positions. In fact, this semester’s Emerging Leaders Retreat is centered around how one’s strengths profile impacts leadership. Going forward, student employment, fraternity and sorority life, and student organizations will all be incorporating Strengths as a way to offer real-life application. 

Whether a college student or working professional, being able to identify and articulate your strengths is enormously important. Our students aren’t theorizing what they might be good at, they’re learning for certain.

And we’re just getting started.

This year in Career Services, we’ve launched Career Colleagues, where students work side by side with Career Services staff as resources to their peers. After receiving StrengthsFinder training, they become the first point of contact for much of the CDI curriculum. It’s an innovative way for our students to develop leadership and mentoring skills while helping their classmates improve their skills development and career search.

In addition, Strengths Fellows are being developed by Student Affairs. Like Career Colleagues, Strengths Fellows are students who are trained in Strengths in order to help guide their peers into experiential learning opportunities that will allow them to use their talents.  In addition, Resident Assistants have also gone through Strengths trainings and are incorporating them into their living and learning communities through floor programming and one-on-one interactions with their residents.  From a macro level staff within Student Affairs are using StrengthsFinder and Gallup survey results to reimagine the entire framework for the co-curricular experience.

At Bentley, our alumni are engaged in the workplace because they’ve done the work over the course of their four years. They know what their strengths are and have the technical skills and tools to match. Our goal is not to help students get their first job, but instead, to get the right job that will lead them to a lifetime of success and happiness.