Mentoring is a professional relationship that helps less experienced workers (the protégés or mentees) learn by observing, participating in and leading real-world experiences. Job-specific mentoring has been used for decades to supplement formal training and accelerate skill mastery and careers. However, its recent popularity can be attributed, in part, to an accelerated pace of innovation and a growing competition for talent.
Organizations are attracted to the potential gains attributed to mentorship as they work to create their own programs. Here are six ways to establish a mentoring program that benefits your company.
1. Attract And Retain Talent
For business executives, one of today's toughest challenges is finding and keeping workers. To address recruitment and retention concerns, some truly amazing and creative employee perks — think outdoor basketball courts and unlimited paid time off — are increasingly common in organizations nationwide. Because a lack of professional growth is a frequent reason for employee turnover, mentoring programs also make that list.
By 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials, but the majority of them are unsatisfied with how their leadership skills are currently being developed: Two-thirds said they would take a pay cut to work at a company offering good mentorship opportunities.
To keep these valued up-and-comers from taking jobs elsewhere, organizations must formalize mentoring programs and offer them to workers who want access to leaders and ongoing career direction. Mentoring is a popular notion among millennials and Generation Z because their work styles often revolve around development, value and appreciation of their expertise.
To make your mentoring program a success, select mentors who are committed to their protégé’s development. When the mentee sees that resources have been dedicated to their professional growth, they are more likely to be loyal to the company and better understand their value in the organization.
2. Improve Employee Engagement, Motivation And Satisfaction
Low employee engagement continues to weigh on organizations. Feeling valued is a key component of engagement that mentorship addresses. And engagement extends beyond protégés: Mentors often also experience greater job satisfaction and a higher commitment to their employers.
It’s important for leaders to foster an innovative culture that adds relevance to the company. Reverse mentoring programs help with this strategy by making younger workers the mentors. In these programs, their technical expertise is tapped and shared. For example, younger employees may have more experience with audio and video production, which can help boost your brand and appeal on social media.
3. Reduce Stress And Burnout
While some jobs are more stressful than others, certain personality types may see their work environment as threatening and demanding and feel powerless to handle challenges on the job. The presence of a mentor can be effective in offsetting vulnerability to stress and burnout in these individuals.
Mentoring relationships provide the context for mentors to discuss protégés’ concerns, share ideas for managing anxieties and help them find meaning in their work. With this support, protégés may also be less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors such as absenteeism.
To ensure success, mentors must understand mentoring is different than leading or directing employees. They will need to be able to quickly understand the nuances of the mentee’s situation, think critically and be influential. It’s crucial that both parties are oriented on what the partnership will entail. To kick off the program, organizations may develop a list of questions that helps sets the tone, such as:
• What do you expect from the program?
• What can your partner expect from you?
• Have you participated in a mentoring program before?
• If so, what went well? What didn’t work?
• What is your preferred method of communication?
4. Accelerate Learning And Time To Competency
The fast pace of innovation in today’s world puts tremendous pressure on organizations to be agile. For that to happen, employees need to get up to speed quickly and keep learning constantly. Formal training serves as the base for this corporate development drive. However, budget constraints, workload demands and a dispersed workforce are driving a trend toward DIY and on-demand learning, as well as a resurgence of interest in workplace mentorship programs.
Mentoring fits the bill by decreasing the time needed to produce quality work. While training alone increases manager productivity, when it's combined with mentoring, performance can skyrocket. When formal training and mentoring are used together, mentors can prepare protégés by introducing the topic before training begins and then reiterate the ideas and put them in practice after the training.
5. Facilitate Knowledge Transfer And Leadership Development
Every employee has job-specific knowledge, and organizations want to ensure that intellectual capital stays within the company. Mentoring promotes knowledge sharing and transfer, helping companies minimize loss of information that hasn’t been passed on when workers retire or leave.
In addition to transferring job-specific knowledge, mentoring helps prepare young employees to step into leadership positions vacated by experienced workers. Otherwise, with some 10,000 U.S. workers reaching retirement age every day, organizations will be forced to promote young workers, whether they’re ready or not. One strategy for implementing mentoring in leadership succession is for current leaders to develop a program that incorporates current needs and priorities and aligns with the company's vision for the future.
6. Foster Workplace Diversity
Getting the most from a diverse workforce means putting programs in place that promote interaction and inclusion. Mentoring can support workplace diversity better than diversity training programs alone. To establish a mentoring program that promotes inclusion, assessment of shared values and personalities are key. Personality tests like DiSC or Myers-Briggs can help you find the most compatible personality matches.
Strategic matching also has been effective in integrating cultures when one company acquires another or when organizations have offices in diverse countries. By increasing contact among different groups, workers can explore and appreciate one-on-one cultural values and work styles.
