Most successful companies use mentoring as an instrument to combat complex human resource challenges such as improving workforce productivity, employee retention and enabling company succession plans. Mentorship helps employees identify with the company by fulfilling their innate need to improve themselves both in terms of honing their technical, managerial as well as social skills.
Here are some practices to create an effective workplace mentoring program:
- Define goals: Asking questions like what one aims to achieve from the program, help in identifying goals for the mentoring program. Effective corporate mentoring programs usually focus on succession planning, and increasing employee engagement as well as productivity. One needs to make sure that the goals are specific, realistic and measurable.
- Identify mentors: The ideal mentor should be a role model. This person should have the eagerness to help others and be willing to commit time. When new mentors are introduced to their mentees, it is preferable to start off the relationship in a casual setting to make the employees feel more comfortable speaking to the mentor.
- Design training materials: Mentorship programs should be designed so that participating employees will acquire skills that will help them grow. Basic guidelines for mentoring should be in place to make the program successful.
- Create mentoring communication: Communicating frequently with the participants is essential. Offering ideas for mentoring activities, additional training through webinars and podcasts are also great tactics to adopt. In addition, sharing new mentoring success stories with your participants will help motivate them further.
- Evaluate: Coming up with a plan to assess the success of the company’s mentoring program is important. Taking note of the frequency of meetings and interactions between mentors and mentees will help to set up the metrics to assess qualities like employee engagement and talent retention. These results can be measured during employee performance reviews.
According to a study, “Career Benefits Associated with Mentoring for Mentors” which was published in the Journal of Vocational Behaviour, people who had the opportunity to serve as mentors, experienced greater job satisfaction and a higher commitment to their employer. Hence, corporate mentoring is on the rise today!
