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copied!<p>I am afraid it might sound disappointing but it is not the best idea to utilise students to cut your organisational unit workload down. Probably, if your goal is cutting workload the best thing is not to take students. Read on to understand why.</p> <p>Though you haven't specified the level of work-related expertise the students possess, nor did you mention the duration of their attachment, I assume from the tone of your question that their expertise is not sufficient to hit the ground running. It is also reasonable to assume that they are not staying for longer than 2-3 months.</p> <p>The essential benefits your organisation can extract even given the limited timeframe are:</p> <ol> <li><p>Notice and grab talented workers before they even get to the job market. Later in their working life they are likely not to be that easily available. </p></li> <li><p>Turn every student into your organisation salesman. Let them tell everyone how good your product is, bring you in contracts in the future or make their peers envy their work experience increasing the pool of good candidates for your company. </p></li> <li><p>Outsiders can help cast a fresh eye on your processes, procedures, product, expose inefficiencies etc.</p></li> <li><p>Learn from them the latest stuff taught at universities.</p></li> <li><p>Boost your time morale: Maslow theory, "esteem needs". Even the most junior member of your team becomes somewhat more senior, since these students have yet to achieve that position.</p></li> </ol> <p>Cutting down workload means that you'd need to find a set of tasks which is fairly independent, does not require knowledge or skills that the students do not have and needs much of your team's time to transfer. The tasks cannot be strategically important in case they cock it up, not can it be operationally important. Hence you left with some dusty requests for management reports or research and development projects. </p> <p>Chances are that R&D considered to be more desired work within your organisation and if you give exclusively to students some people feelings are going to get hurt.</p>

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