How to Retain Your Employees Through Mentorship

When it comes to workplace practices and career trajectory, the current market landscape is almost unrecognizable from decades prior. Even putting all technological advancement aside, the shift in the priorities of millennials towards a better work-life balance, accompanied by significant changes in corporate benefit and pension policies, has created a lot more lateral movement between companies. The days of spending 30-plus years working with the same company and retiring with a full pension are gone for many sectors. 

Paradigm shifts on both the employee and employer side of the business were exacerbated by the pandemic-stricken labor environment of 2020, where 64 million Americans experienced a job separation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines total occupational separation as the number of people who leave an occupation, whether due to retirement, job transition, or other reasons for labor force removal. Even before the pandemic disrupted work as we know it, the challenges of finding secure work were impacting both ends of the employment process in the age of millennials. 

As an employer or company stakeholder, this reduction in job security and reliable employment can be problematic to your bottom line. Previous estimates put the cost of turnover at over 30% of the employee’s salary, with the main expense caused by hiring a replacement. The other ancillary costs of training, in addition to the impact this constant disruption has on workplace culture, add up quickly and can be a significant drain on your company’s resources. Considering traditional incentives of 401ks and adequate health benefits are difficult to guarantee, you need to look for other ways to ensure that employees stick around. 

Providing quality mentorship is a great way of ensuring that your staff sticks around. By rolling out career and personal development services to each worker, you show employees that the company is invested in their wellbeing and success. Businesses that provide customized training to employees are better positioned to reduce turnover, retain key talent, and create a more engaged, diverse workforce. 

Retaining Employees Through Mentorship

Regardless of your industry, human capital is the most critical component of your business success. The millennial labor force has met the reduced security of today’s market with a willingness to transfer roles at the drop of a hat, causing problems with retention and increased costs for business owners and stakeholders. By implementing mentorship programs to foster career growth for employees, companies can ensure their strong talent pools through stronger interpersonal connections, helping staff improve their professional skill set, and creating a more diverse workplace.

Interpersonal Connections 

When individual employees have a strong relationship with professionals from higher up the organizational hierarchy, the workplace culture also benefits. Individuals who receive quality mentorship are known to develop strong leadership skills themselves, and this can have a cascading positive effect on the employees around them. Citizenship behavior, the prosocial actions that employees carry out to benefit workplace culture, is fostered by these programs. This creates a work environment that is more conducive to success for today’s millennial workforce.

Impactful mentorship relationships also help bridge the classic divide between employees and management. Perceived organizational support (POS) has a positive behavioral impact on employees, motivating them to perform their designated roles more effectively. It can also spark your staff to go above the call of duty and contribute in a larger capacity, exceeding outlined expectations.

Professional Skill Development

In addition to producing strong interpersonal connections and better workplace culture, professional mentorship programs allow for customized, role-specific learning to occur in a safe environment. Promoting from within, rather than seeking out new hires, is ideal in terms of expense and quality. Still, you need to ensure that your upward-moving staff member has the necessary technical and communication skills to thrive. Experienced mentors have years of experience executing at a high level and can endow highly technical abilities to your employees. 

When your employees feel like they have a clear path to growth within your organization, they will be far less likely to separate from your company. Given the competitive nature of today’s hiring landscape, the fact that millennials are constantly shifting between businesses shows how many employers continually fail to provide a concrete path for internal career advancement. A well-implemented mentorship program is a great way to ensure that your current talent pool expands over time and that you retain ideal employees. 

Enhancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As companies continue to adopt rich diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks with actionable goals, mentorship programs are the perfect way to ensure that you are actively seeking out a more diverse organization. There are a host of benefits to creating an equitable management environment, from unique boardroom perspectives to enhanced operational outcomes. 

For instance, a 2018 survey of corporate directors shows that nearly 85% of executives believe that diverse boardrooms perform better.  When you begin to expose your millennial staff to mentors from diverse backgrounds, you are effectively kickstarting the process of creating a more inclusive employment environment. This will help you retain BIPOC employees and those from other marginalized groups, helping bring an overdue change to the traditional business environment. 

If you’re ready to make a significant improvement in your employee retention efforts while also reaping a series of individual and workplace culture benefits, reach out to Mentor Cloud today to request a demo. Our comprehensive mentorship platform is perfectly designed to integrate guidance initiatives into your existing company structure. With years of experience connecting hundreds of thousands of mentees with mentors at a global scale, you can rest assured knowing that MentorCloud has the experience to help your staff flourish.