The benefits that can come from a workplace mentoring program are limitless and apply to the person being mentored, the person doing the mentoring and of course the company itself.
The person receiving the mentoring has quick access to valuable insights and experience, help with personal development and feels valued. The mentor often experiences increased confidence and job satisfaction while also developing leadership skills. Combined together, these result in overall improved employee satisfaction, retention, development, safety and production for the company.
While mentoring relationships can be useful at all stages of an employee’s career, there are two times that it can be especially helpful. The first is during the onboarding process for a new employee. Research has shown that having an assigned mentor can help new employees better adjust to a new company and as a result, reduce turnover. Having an experienced person to observe and train them helps a new worker understand and become proficient at his position more quickly as well as become familiar with the structure and culture of the company. The other time mentoring is especially important is when companies have experienced workers nearing retirement. These workers have years of experience and knowledge that will leave the company with them if it isn’t passed onto younger workers. By placing these people in mentoring positions, you can keep this invaluable knowledge working for your company for years to come.
Like any changes in a company, developing a mentor program takes time and effort. To receive the best results from a mentoring program follow these best practices.
• Ensure management support. If company leadership doesn’t believe in and support the program, the mentors won’t either. As a result the mentors won’t be engaged and giving the relationship the attention that it needs. The result is often worse than having no mentor program as research has shown that a disengaged mentor is worse for employee morale and retention than having no mentor at all.
• Define your goals. Are you trying to develop leaders, teach certain skills or incorporate new workers? The structure of your mentor program will be based on what you want to achieve. It will determine whether you have group or one-on-one mentoring, the formality of the mentoring, and how mentors are paired with mentees.
• Have a program manager that champions mentoring. This manager will be someone that believes in the program, promotes it, provides ongoing support to participants, identifies opportunities, troubleshoot problems and makes sure that the program does not fall by the wayside.
• Train the mentors and those being mentored. This training should include an emphasis on the benefits of a mentoring relationship, manage expectations and set parameters for the relationship.
• Allow a painless out if a match doesn’t work out. A mentoring relationship should be mutually satisfying, comfortable and voluntary. If either the mentor or the mentee want to stop the relationship and the mentoring process for any reason, there should be a simple way to do so that causes no repercussions to their jobs.
• Track and evaluate the results. Like with anything, you won’t know if it’s working unless you assess it. Create metrics based on your chosen goals and gather feedback from mentors, mentees and supervisors. Some things you may want to track are engagement and retention or participating employees, the frequency of interactions and whether participants think the program helped them reach their goals.
