In the past, there have been many debates about the "effectiveness" of mentoring in the corporate world. These days, there's no question: 71% of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs to their employees to aid the organization with employee retention, workforce engagement, and sustained improvement in productivity and diversity training. Keeping that in mind, the next step is to understand how to use these tools effectively and develop an effective mentorship program for your company.
What's your requirement?
- Why are you launching this program?
- What do you plan to achieve with it in both the short and long runs?
- Who needs mentoring?
- Who are your capable mentors?
Begin the process by finding answers to all these questions. Ensure that the mentorship programs are aligned with your company's long-term aims and approaches. Having a realistic projection sets up the program to yield positive results for your company and endure long enough to make a difference to the company and its employees.
How do you select the right mentors?
Not all employees, however senior or experienced, are fit to be mentors. Identify those with the right qualities to make them exceptional mentors, and establish some mentoring workshops to polish their skills. However, assigning one mentor to a mentee is not an efficient practice. An employee will have many areas where she/he needs a mentor's assistance, and no mentor will be capable of adequately guiding them through all of their potential problems. Create a large pool of mentors and mentees so that a mentee has the opportunity to get guidance and insights from multiple mentors under the same roof. If a mentor has to be allotted, then conduct a personality compatibility test to assure optimal matches.
Who needs mentors?
Not every employee needs mentoring at any given time, and it is also not practical to mentor everyone. Provide an opportunity for all employees to sign up for the program. Get the managers' opinions on who within their teams might need mentoring. Convey the advantages of mentor programs and what the employees can expect from them.
Why embrace technology-based mentoring programs?
A face-to-face mentor-mentee relationship is one key to developing the all-important trust factor. Still, there are situations when this is not a practical option. At this stage, technology can enable companies to keep the mentor program running even if the mentor and mentee are far away from each other. Especially so in this internet and cloud-enabled world, distance mentoring is popular.
MentorCloud provides this option. Schedule a demo with MentorCloud to learn how your organization can leapfrog the time cost of establishing a mentoring program by tapping into the resources and expertise of the MentorCloud community. Engage with experts and learners who are aligned with your organization's goals and objectives; transcend geographic boundaries; foster a meaningful collaboration, and unlock the potential talent of your workforce!
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