How can a mentoring program improve employee retention? Below are some of the most common mentoring focus areas: Skills Development Mentorships that focus on skills development help the mentee learn specific skill sets in order to develop him or herself, add value to the organization and progress on his or her career path. For example, if the mentee is in sales, a possible mentoring activity could be practicing cold calling.
An example of a good activity for this type of mentoring objective is discussing the mentee's early career dreams and possible career moves. Problem Solving Mentorships that focus on problem solving help the mentee develop cognitive skills in order to strengthen the mental process of discovering, analyzing and solving problems to overcome obstacles.
An activity example for this mentoring objective would be to identify a real problem with his or her mentor and then brainstorm solutions together, as well as discuss pros and cons for each option. Networking Mentorships that focus on networking help the mentee expand his or her professional connections and networks. An activity example for this type of objective would be for the mentor and mentee to attend a professional conference or event together.
Below are some tips to get you started: Determine your main objectives. Some new hire programs are designed to assist with training or succession planning, while others work to give employees a broad feel of the corporate culture. Find your executive champion to support and sponsor the program. This person should be easily recognized by new hires and encourage new hires to join.
Look for an executive who had a great mentor in the past that contributed to his or her success. Identify your mentors. For new hire mentoring, it's usually beneficial to have mentors who work in a similar job function or in the same location as the new employee.
Communicate about the program. Let new hires know about the new hire mentoring program during the recruitment process and make sure your managers are encouraging new employees to join the program. Research suggests that higher-quality job applicants are more likely to accept a job offer if a company includes information about their mentoring programs in their recruitment literature. Measure your success. Ask your mentees to rate how well mentoring helped them get assimilated to the company, understand their new roles, and help solve problems.
Track and compare retention rates, promotions and employee evaluations between new hires that participated in the mentoring program vs. Below are some tips to get you started on your search: Look for someone in a high-visibility position.
The ideal person will usually work outside of the Human Resources and Training departments, and should be easily recognized by employees. For example, the VP of Marketing might be a good fit.
Look for someone who attributes his or her success to having had a great mentor. Look for someone who will participate in mentoring activities. This may be anything from conducting job shadows or hosting networking events to being a mentor in the program. Look for someone who will help fund the program. This is an essential characteristic in an executive champion, as this person will be your voice when it comes to annual budget meetings and securing financial sponsors for the program.
Here are some tips from award-winning mentoring pairs: Set Clear Ground Rules for the Mentoring Relationship During your first meeting, talk about items such as the frequency of meetings, level of confidentiality, exit plan, etc.
When you talk about these things at the beginning of the mentorship, you avoid future problems and issues. Define Mentorship Goals and Objectives Determine the objective for the mentorship such as skills development, career growth, networking or life balance. Once you've figured out the purpose for the relationship, you can then identify goals to work as part of the mentorship. Mentees should take ownership when setting these goals, while mentors can encourage their mentees to break down their goals into manageable steps and action items.
Track progress toward the pre-set goals and make changes as necessary. Plan Useful Activities After you've figured out the main objective of the mentorship and defined the main goals, work together to create activities that will help you achieve them. For example, if you're mentorship objective is to improve skill sets, you could practice a specific career-related skill, such as sales or a mock interview.
If the mentee would like to work on career growth, the mentor could conduct a mini review with the mentee's supervisor, peers and subordinates to identify areas for development.
Find Your Own Unique Approach to the Mentorship While some mentoring programs feature strict rules, tips and worksheets, excessive reading materials and formality are not always necessary.
In fact, the majority of people do not want lots of reading materials and excessive rules. Here's how to get started. How to Start a Mentoring Program: Creating a Structure The first step anyone thinking about starting a mentoring program should take is to define what the objective of the program will be.
If you are aiming for higher minority retention rates, your program will be structured differently than if you were trying to develop leaders, teach a specific skill, or welcome newcomers to your organization. In order to develop a program that best fit Morgan Stanley's goal-;to retain women employees in sales-;Barbara Adolf, who has since founded a human services consultancy in New York, started by choosing a group of leaders from different departments in the company to brainstorm a curriculum, and list what makes employees successful at the company, for mentoring sessions.
Since there were more women who wanted to be mentored than available mentors, the mentees were put into groups with two mentors as facilitators. But when Michelle Ferguson, the senior vice president of international operations of McGraw-Hill Education, developed a program that originally had a similar goal for its mentoring program, she ended up with a completely different format.
The mentors and mentees met individually for between one and three hours every month for a year. Lois Zachary, the president of a leadership development and mentoring consultancy called Leadership Development Services in Phoenix. If your company is extremely formal, it might be best to have a formal application process, minimum time requirements, and set durations for the mentoring relationship typically mentoring relationships last between six months and two years, depending on the goal of the mentee.
If your company is informal, it might be okay to match people up and then let them figure out the logistics. But it's important to put at least minimal guidelines in place. No matter what degree of formality your program takes on, you need someone to champion the project and check-up on how well its guidelines are being followed. Others use peer mentoring, bring in an expert for facilitated mentoring, have lower-level employees teach higher-level employees in reverse mentoring, or even use a speed-dating format for "flash mentoring.
But she says the programs in which the participants have some input are usually the most successful. One way of allowing input might be to have mentors and mentees fill out an information sheet about what they hope to offer or obtain from a mentoring relationship.
McGraw-Hill has a system for making mentoring matches that includes a questionnaire, phone interview, and committee recommendation for each mentor and mentee. Another way may be to offer the mentor or mentee several options for a partner and allow them to choose one.
Liz Selzer, a consultant with a California-based consultancy called The Mentoring Group, oversees leadership development for more than 30, leaders in the non-profit sector. She suggests matching people based on who they'll get along with best. But just in case a pair doesn't click, one of the most important things to remember is to set up a way for people to get out of the relationship and find another match without hurt feelings. One way to do this might be to set up a "check-up" or evaluation soon after the relationship begins.
If there is a serious problem, find the mentee a new mentor. How to Start a Mentoring Program: Training You've established what goals a mentoring program can achieve for your company, set up a structure that fits your company culture, and now you are sending your matched pairs off to work.
Many organizations use mentoring platforms with algorithms that use personality information to match mentors and mentees. However, not all organizations have access to such software. Share a list of available mentors and their attributes and expertise, along with available mentees and their attributes and needs.
Giving participants a say in the matching process also increases their ownership of the process and sets the stage for a more fruitful relationship. One of the biggest mentoring mistakes organizations make is setting up the relationship and expecting it to flourish on its own.
Productive mentoring requires ongoing support , including training for mentors on how to build the relationship, how to handle different types of conversations and queries, and how to manage their own biases and expectations. Good practices include supplementing formal training with bite-sized refreshers and resources and creating peer networks for both mentors and mentees. The mentoring program manager should have regular check-ins to help keep the relationship on track with respect to the goals and, more importantly, to give the mentor and the mentee the space to express their concerns and be heard.
Particularly when it comes to encouraging more mentors to join the program, a formal recognition platform goes a long way. For mentees, the benefits of a mentoring relationship are direct, especially if the goals are outlined from the start. For the mentor, however, the benefits can sometimes feel distant, especially when multiple work responsibilities vie for precedence.
Either way, formal recognition is positive reinforcement for current mentors and encouragement for potential mentors. In many mentoring programs, after an engagement is over, the mentoring program manager keeps in touch only with the mentors, for future relationships.
But it is important to engage the mentees, too. They can help through positive word-of-mouth awareness, active recruitment of mentees, or even by signing up and training to become mentors themselves. The organizational impact of a mentoring program depends on its reach. Structuring a mentoring program with these strategies is a sure-fire way of increasing access to the program, thereby improving reach — and success — by leaps and bounds. She blogs at www. Stay up to date on the latest articles, webinars and resources for learning and development.
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