One of the challenges employers face is how to engage better, train, and retain employees. Most of those challenges are best combatted through a culture of recognition and training. Mentoring holds value for employers because it provides a way to cross-train engaged employees, increase job satisfaction for mentors and mentees, and encourage employee growth. Many employers use a mentoring program to recognize employees who are engaged, reliable, and ready for further development.
Mentoring seems like a great idea but can be intimidating for some. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to 10 steps to a mentoring program. Let’s get started!
Three Types of Mentors
Mentors can be formal or informal mentors. They can be acquaintances who become mentors or an assigned “guide.” Generally, there are three types of mentors.
Peer mentors are often referred to as “buddy” mentors. They can be in the same group or at the same level as the mentee. Peer mentors help to introduce new employees to the organization and show them the ropes. Assign peer mentors within a group of new hires who can share what they are learning with each other.
Career mentors are senior mentors who can serve as an advisor and advocate. The career mentor helps to contextualize the mentee’s role within the organization and provide a broader view. They provide a “what’s next” outlook for the mentee regarding job opportunities and advancement within the company.
Life mentors guide outside the employee’s work-life and can be alumnis of the company and other leaders. Their influence can impact the employee in all aspects of their life.
Methods of Mentoring
Before organizing a mentoring program, it helps to have a clear idea of the various types of available mentoring methods.
One-on-one mentoring provides an intimate mentoring relationship. It is often one type of mentoring that most people imagine when they think of mentoring. It includes discussion, a confidential setting, and relationship building.
Group mentoring occurs when several mentees are paired with a single mentor. It provides a way for discussion and for the mentor to encourage mentees to brainstorm solutions to problems. It allows for more mentees to be coached by a single mentor without overwhelming the mentor’s time constraints.
Anonymous mentoring allows companies to team up with mentors and mentees anonymously. Both parties are unknown, which allows for candid discussion. Communication, done electronically, also eliminates time limitations of mentors because it doesn’t take as long to respond, and mentors have some flexibility of when to respond. Anonymous mentoring is usually set for a specific period, such as 12 months.
Reverse mentoring provides an opportunity for a younger, newer worker to mentor a senior leader. This provides a way for Jr. and Sr. employees to build bridges and foster relationships. It can help older employees better understand a younger workforce while providing stability and a holistic view of the company to younger employees.
Technology-based mentoring occurs when mentors record short 3-7 minute videos mentoring around a specific question or problem. Mentees can access videos and questions or feedback provided electronically.
Diversity Mentoring provides employees from a minority group in your organization a mentor and helps to advance diversity within the organization. Diversity mentoring can also help to balance out gender inequality in leadership. Often unstructured mentors tend to gravitate toward others who are very similar to themselves, which locks minorities out of the benefits of mentoring.
Getting Started: How to create a successful mentoring program
Not all mentoring programs magically create wild success without any effort at all. Instead, many mentoring programs struggle to create for the company the success its founders envision. Make sure that your mentorship program isn’t one of those. There are several important steps to ensure that mentoring works with your company.
1. Have a Clear Goal for Mentoring
Decide what you want to accomplish through mentoring. Where are the skills or educational gaps in your company? Perhaps you are trying to train a large younger workforce before upcoming retirements by senior leadership. Identify if you are trying to create a more successful onboarding experience or re-engage burnout and unhappy employees. Corporations often use diversity mentoring to help minorities and women have a mentor in their career advancement.
Different mentorships have clear advantages, depending on the problems you’re trying to solve and the goals of your program. Take the time to identify those goals and how you will measure success.
2. Get The Buy-in From Senior Management
A mentoring program isn’t just a fad or a short experiment, so it’s essential to get your senior leadership on board. Mentoring programs require some business resources, so it’s good to have support from the top. Employees are typically paid for time spent in mentoring and allowed to use other business resources.
Plus, it can be very beneficial to have some of your top leadership willing to mentor and teach. As leadership is supportive and helps to advocate mentoring, the program will see more success.
3. Create a Plan
Decide the details of your program. These details include the length of the program, who is responsible for setting mentees up with mentors, and how often mentors will meet with their mentees. Include a list of possible topics, a questionnaire, and other help for mentors to get started with their mentee.
It should include how feedback will be collected and how the participants will communicate. It should also include the goals of the mentorship and what the mentor should focus on. Have a set timeframe for the mentoring program.
4. Educate Employees
Mentorship programs seldom work when they are mandatory. Instead, you need to get the buying from employees. Educate employees on the benefits of both mentoring and being a mentor. Inform employees about how the program works. This can alleviate common concerns such as the embarrassment of not understanding corporate culture or feeling too busy for yet another task.
5. Help Mentors Succeed
Not all senior or skilled employees are naturally great mentors. You can set your mentors up for success by providing training and a framework for their mentoring. Help them set goals and objectives around what they wish to mentor. Mentorship training can include training on how to give constructive feedback, listening, or communication skills. It can provide training on emotional intelligence and teaching skills. Mentees should understand that they are in charge of setting up the meetings, coming with questions, and coming to the sessions with something to offer.
6. Match up Mentors and Mentees Carefully
Carefully pair mentors and mentees. Match mentors with mentees who have career goals that match the experience of the mentor. Consider using a questionnaire that outlines goals, skills gaps, or personality traits to make it easier for a better mentor and mentee pairing. You could also have mentor and mentee prospects take a personality test to help match them as well.
7. Find Your Advocates
Some employees will be more enthusiastic about the mentoring program than others. Find your ambassadors and encourage them to help you recruit and promote your mentoring program. Arm advocates with some of the statistics about the benefits of mentoring and help them so they can help educate the rest of your workforce.
Encourage mentors and mentees to share success stories on Thanks using Celebrate.
8. Set Ground Rules for Mentoring
It’s a good idea to set ground rules for mentoring. For example, decide when mentor/mentee conversations should be confidential. As a general rule, anything the mentee shares with the mentor should be kept in confidence unless it breaks the law or company policy. For example, if the mentee confides that they are sexually harassed at work, the mentor would be obligated to report this information to the proper authorities.
Another rule that the admin could set in place is that mentors and mentees always meet in a public space. These rules protect both of them from possible false accusations or inappropriate behavior. Consider setting a trial period, such as 1-3 months, when both the mentor and mentee are surveyed. At that point, the relationship can be cancelled or a new mentor assigned if the mentorship is not working for either of them.
9. Monitor the Success of the Program
Once you have started a mentorship program, don’t forget about it. Get feedback from the participants. This should include the participants perceived benefits that they gained as well as feedback on the program itself. Check your goals. Did the program produce the desired results? You can use Surveys or Polls to analyze the program, what went well, what participants would change, and other feedback for the program.
10. Track ROI of Mentoring Program
Each mentoring program will have a different set of goals, but you should track success to those goals. If your mentoring program’s primary goal is to help new hires acclimate to the company culture and increase retention among recruits, then tracking the retention of recruits is essential for measuring ROI. For example, one company may show a 25% attrition in recruits in the first two years of pre mentoring. But, if the attrition rate drops to 15% after mentoring, then the decreased costs of turnover and recruiting should be factored into the ROI.
Similarly, if mid-level managers seem to leave after 3-5 years in the job, mentoring may help advance and retain that talent.
The clearer the goals of your mentoring program, the easier it will be to track the success and the ultimate ROI to the company.
Conclusion
Investing in the mentoring and growth of your employees is one way to recognize engaged and top performers. For additional ideas on recognizing employees, check out 11 Ways to Show Employee Appreciation by Investing in their Professional Development.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.