Why you should use mentoring

You have a seasoned professional that knows their stuff. They’re what you’d call a role model - someone you would definitely want to pass on their knowledge and skills. You think a less-experienced individual could learn a lot from them. Likewise, you think the more seasoned professional could gain a renewed sense of enthusiasm for their career. According to numerous studies (CIPD 2013, Addington 2009, Home 2011) mentoring can vastly improve recruitment, retention and promotion. In this week’s blog post we talk about mentors and the importance of promoting mentorship in your workplace.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is the pairing of an experienced or skilled person (mentor) with a person who would like to improve his or her skills (mentee). The mentor acts as a role model and supports the mentee by sharing knowledge, resources and advice to help them improve their skills. Mentoring is not supervision. Mentorship is a relationship of equals and can change over time as the mentee moves from some degree of dependence to independence.

Why should you encourage one employee to mentor another?

Today organisations are realising that a workplace mentoring program can serve the entire employee lifecycle. It can help new employees improve their new hire retention rates; it can enable aspiring talent to fit into company succession plans; and reverse mentoring can ensure senior executives stay current with the latest business practices and technology. Regardless of the form mentoring takes, it facilitates sharing knowledge, expertise, skills, insights, and experiences through dialogue and collaborative learning – and as a manager, one of your objectives is to staff your office with the most knowledgeable and talented employees.

Here are some of the benefits of mentoring:

For the Organisation –

• Faster, more effective transitions into senior positions

• Retention of quality staff – young and mature

• Enhanced transfer of knowledge and skills

• Gains in productivity and the performance of individuals

• Increased on-the-job learning that reduces off-job training costs

• Better communication, commitment and motivation

For the Mentor –

• Renews their enthusiasm for the role of expert and revitalises interest in work

• Increased opportunities to share skills and knowledge

• Enhances skills in coaching, counselling, listening, and modelling

• Increased job satisfaction and confidence

• Increased sense of value in the workplace

• Develops and practices a more personal style of leadership

For the Mentee/Protégé –

• Makes a smoother transition into the workforce

• Improved skills and furthers his/her development as a professional

• Increased self-confidence and greater career satisfaction with an increased likelihood of career success

• New insight on the company's culture and organization

• Development in areas not typically address through training or on the job

• Access to new resources and gets assistance with ideas

This week’s tips for encouraging a culture of sharing and promoting mentoring relationships:

• Top-down: Show that mentoring is not just for the newbies. Everyone in your organization can benefit from mentoring, including senior leaders. Those initiatives should be visible and communicated. Incorporate mentoring into your on boarding process so that multiple departments can play a role. Offer job rotation assignments to help newer employees establish contacts and identify prospective mentors in other units. Your veteran employees are more likely to participate if they know their direct reports will also have opportunities to shine in other departments and potentially make lateral moves.

• Rethink your hiring process: Although experienced talent in your sector is difficult to recruit, you can use behavioural interviewing to hire people who are more likely to be proactive in seeking mentors and working cooperatively. Not everyone is truly open to being mentored. Let applicants know upfront that they will be expected to share in one or more mentoring relationships, which requires input and investment on the mentee’s side, too.

• Open door, open mind: As a manager, you are in a mentor position yourself. Do you claim to have open-door policy? Does that also go for having an “open-mind” policy? If you are committed to growing your team to be leaders and idea generators – sometimes your employees may have some great ideas, as a manager, be open to hearing them out and if they are something you want to look into, develop them together.

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