Mentoring is a sustained one-to-one relationship between an experienced professional ( MENTOR) sharing their professional and personal knowledge, skills and expertise and a less experienced individual (MENTEE) open and willing to learn and grow within a specific industry and in general.

The mentor provides advice and guidance to the mentee.

The purpose of mentoring is to grow by tapping into the knowledge and experience of someone further along than yourself. It is the best way to accelerate your development by becoming more competent in your role.

Statistics (“How becoming a mentor can boost your career on Forbes.com, October, 31^st 2011)  show that employees with  mentors are promoted five times more than their peers and mentees as well as mentors get faster raises in salaries. For the company the cost of a mentoring program or salary raises amortize easily as retention rates for mentees and mentors are significantly higher.

If you are looking for ways to foster meaningful relationships, develop talent within your organization, and get the most out of every member in your team – implement a mentoring program.

Companies with mentoring programs retain and engage talent. They do attract new talent as workplace wellbeing and self-improvement have become important to employees.

Despite several advantages only a few are lucky enough to have a mentor. Some Companies are not yet aware of its full benefit.

Look at aspects determining a turnover decision as job embeddedness and career and professional development.

There are three factors that demonstrate job embeddedness:

• The extent to which one has links to people or groups in the work community
• The degree of coping well with tasks, company culture and community
• The level of sacrifice one would make to give up on things leaving the job
   

All aspects will be reinforced positively through mentoring.

Career and professional development through mentors, a supportive work environment does form employees. Providing career mentors to less experienced employees promotes the development of skills and social ties more than job training programs which evaluate. Through mentoring employees are positively reinforced and grow more holistically. Strength and excellence come out of positive reinforcement.

Establishing a mentoring program consists of different steps and considerations:

1. Define the purpose and goals of your program

Why do you want to start a program? Is employee engagement low? Are talented graduates leaving? Or is your gender balance in leadership highly uneven?

Define reasons clearly with your team and make sure you keep them up designing and running your mentoring program. Do also define the reasons why an employee may sign up (get a promotion or build their confidence)

Be conscious about what you want to achieve from your program and think about how you can measure it.

2. Design your mentoring program

Here you determine concrete factors like

• How many spaces do I have available
• Is it inclusive or exclusive
• How can people sign up (if inclusive)
• How long will the mentoring relationship last?
• What is the commitment expected from participants?
• How do you monitor results and progress?

3. How to onboard mentors and mentees

To attract people to the program you have to highlight the benefits for all participants and remove the barriers to entry. People may think they don’t have the time to commit.

Offer training and preparation materials as people will feel informed and more comfortable committing. Get key stakeholders and leaders on board, others will follow.

4. How to match mentors and mentees

The background, skills, experience, interests the participants were required to enter upon sign up can be used to match mentees with mentors. Mostly this is done manually and thus subject to human bias. Using mentoring software to match them avoids biases and democratizes mentoring within organizations.

5. How to maintain the mentoring

As it is not a routine yet you need to implement structure, guidance and  inspiration, reminding them why they signed up. It is important to check in with mentors and mentees, ask for reports and feedback. This should be part of step 2, the designing of the program.

In the beginning of a mentoring relationship it is important that the mentee outlines clear goals to the mentor. This will give direction and objective, as well as hold both parts responsible for reaching these goals. Creating a community around the mentoring program is helpful. Also, send a regular newsletter to all participants of the program, featuring content about getting the most out of the relationship as well as personal development tips. Celebrate successes and make everyone feel being part of something.

6. How to measure success and ROI of the program?

You can evaluate the business objectives. Have you hit your KPIs as a result of the mentoring program? The Mentees personal development, did they achieve their goals? It is crucial to ask for feedback: were mentors satisfied with the outcome of the relationship? Would they mentor again?  What could be improved? What were the biggest challenges?

Summary of mentoring benefits are:

• Employee engagement
• Employee satisfaction
• Employee loyalty
• These contribute to retention.

Mentoring improves:

• Diversity in leadership
• Knowledge sharing
• On-boarding ease
• The company culture

Additionally learning costs are reduced as you source experts from within your own organization to foster the development of others. The opportunity costs of having a mentoring program are far higher than the costs of organizing and establishing a program.

Mentoring is a positive experience of growth for both sides!