Attracting, developing and retaining great employees is a necessary but expensive process. But what would happen if those employees decide it's time for them to move on either to retirement or a new role? How can you ensure that the skills and knowledge that is critical to the success of your business is not lost when they leave? The simple, cost-effective answer is through a mentoring platform.
The benefits of a mentoring program
1. Improved Retention
By putting a program in place to actively develop your employees you are showing your commitment to them and in turn they are more likely to show commitment to your organisation.
2. A more skilled and knowledgeable workforce
Mentoring provides an easy and cost-effective way for employees to connect and to share knowledge and experience. It always seems such a waste when a highly experienced employee retires and takes with them all the years of experience they have built up with them.
3. Improved Succession Planning
A well-structured mentoring program means that you will always have someone who is ready to step up to the plate when a key team member moves on.
4. Improved onboarding
By enabling new hires to connect with more experienced employees you can help them to hit the ground running by providing a support system to help them get to grips with the knowledge, skills and culture needed to become a valuable player.
5. Talent Recruitment
Today's employees are looking to join organisations who offer ongoing professional development and clear progression opportunities. By offering a mentoring program you can clearly demonstrate your commitment in this respect.
What does a successful employee mentoring program look like?
Here are some of the key ingredients of a successful mentoring program:
Purpose
Identify what the purpose of your mentoring program is; we have developed programs with a
wide range of purposes including facilitating Continuous Professional Development, influencing
students to enter organisations, professions and industries and to provide a support network
during the Covid19 pandemic.
Training and Resources
whilst some of your program participants may be seasoned mentors or mentees, the majority will
probably be new to mentoring so it is vital to be able to provide them with guidance and
resources at every step of their journey to ensure the relationship is kept on track and goals
are achieved.
Effective matching
It is important to give thought to what are the skills, experience and areas of support that
your mentees may be seeking and your mentors offering and to provide an easy way for them to be
matched and connected.
Goals
Embarking on a mentoring relationship without setting goals is rather like setting off on a
journey without deciding where you are going, and just hoping you will get there. This is why we
place quite a lot of emphasis on setting SMART goals at the outset of you mentoring relationship
and we provide you with tools to help you do this.
Ensure participants set out and keep to a schedule of meetings
This ensures that the relationship stays on track and progress is made.
Confidentiality
This needs to be agreed at the outset so that both parties feel comfortable having open
discussions.
Promote Your Program
Often mentoring programs are launched in a flurry of promotional activity with high initial
engagement, but as your workforce and their needs change over time it is important to ensure
visibility of the mentoring program so that those who may not have wanted to or been able to
participate at the launch stage have the opportunity to do so at a later date.
If you would like to find out more about setting up running an effective mentoring program just get in touch.
