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Watch the video above to find out about what mentoring is and the benefits it may bring to the participants.

When people think of mentoring, they often focus on the benefits to mentees. While mentees often benefit the most from mentoring, businesses also have a lot to gain from encouraging and/or implementing mentoring programs.

Research has found that employers and employees both benefit from a mentoring program through:

  • increased job satisfaction and higher retention rate of employees, and
  • greater chance of promotion and increased pay for employees.

The main benefit of a mentoring program is the professional development of your mentees, but it also gives your mentors a chance to develop their leadership and team building skills. Big barriers to the success of your mentoring program will include engagement, compatibility, and structure. So how do you implement a program that may succeed?

Think about your goals

To create a successful mentoring program, be clear with you what you want from it. Some goals you can achieve through a program could include:

  • Introducing new hires into the company culture
  • Increasing rates of employee retention
  • Developing leadership skills in potential managers
  • Improving employee communication and teamwork skills

A good way to start thinking about your goals is to think about the skills gap your employees have and what kind of progress you want from them.

Create a plan and structure

When creating a plan and how you will structure the mentoring program, consider:

  • The duration of the program. 6 months to a year are a good place to start.
  • The type of mentoring. This could be one-on-one, group-based, or peer-to-peer.
  • How mentors and mentees enter the program. This could be compulsory, voluntary, or by invitation.
  • The objectives and how they are measured. Having clear goals and expectations are vital to a successful mentoring program. Try setting these as SMART goals.
  • The structure of the mentor-mentee relationship. You could leave this to the participants, or you could set out a format of how often they should meet and how they should communicate.
  • Will you be able to give the participants time? Successful mentoring programs usually have the program as part of the employee’s workload. This might be one or two hours a month.
  • How you will collect feedback. This is important for further developing your program in the future and making sure it is what your business needs.

Once you have a plan ready, you will need to find participants, your mentors, and mentees.

Creating a pool of participants

The goals you are setting out to achieve will heavily affect the way you choose who can participate in the mentoring program. Consider the following:

  • The skill level of the mentors and mentees. Select people who are well-respected, skilled, and dedicated as the mentors, and those that need to build their skills or network as the mentees.
  • People who understand the confidentiality of a mentoring relationship. The relationship should be a safe place for a mentee to discuss issues and for the mentor to bring up their failures and how they have overcome them.

It is also important to put significant care into how you pair these mentors and mentees together. Consider the following:

  • Try to match mentees with mentors who can cover their weaknesses.
  • Try to take interests and hobbies, personality, and other similarities into consideration when matching mentees with mentors.
  • Try to involve the mentees and mentors in the selection process. You could give them a few choices of mentor or mentee and let them make the final choice.

Empower the mentors and mentees

Allowing the participants to take ownership of their mentoring and organising the sessions can increase the success of the mentoring relationship. This can include:

  • Setting up the meetings
  • Making the initial contact with each other
  • Developing goals for the program
  • Creating an agenda for their mentoring sessions

To assist the participants with organising the mentoring relationship, you could create a one-page overview on how to structure their meetings. The time spent organising meetings and nurturing the relationship will give the participants valuable experience in communication, leadership, and organisational skills.

These responsibilities could also be given to the mentee to put an emphasis on the development of their transferable skills and empower them to take the initiative with their mentor.

Improve engagement from mentors

Some mentors may not feel engaged with the program since they could feel like it takes up their time. However, it is important to ensure the mentors understand how it could benefit them and the business. The benefits to mentors include:

  • Increased reputation and a sense of their value to the business.
  • Appreciation and gratitude from participants in the program.
  • Professional development in leadership, communication, and other transferable skills.
  • An opportunity to form new connections and expand their network within the business.

To increase engagement from your mentors you can try to implement the following strategies:

  • Recognise and appreciate the effort from mentors.
  • Develop clear objectives and outcomes for the mentors. These could be part of their performance indicators.
  • Provide mentorship training. It is important mentors have great active listening and questioning skills.

Improve the program by gathering feedback

It is valuable to monitor and evaluate the progress of the program so you can gauge success and identify where you can improve the program. You could conduct interviews with mentors and mentees to get their input, or alternatively feedback forms that mentors and mentees can choose to submit anonymously.

Make sure you consider what your initial goals were for this program and see if you have achieved these.

Sources:

Gartner: Case study: Workforce analytics at Sun

Forbes: Improve workplace culture with a strong mentoring program