Today’s businesses face many challenges. Employee turnover, disengagement, and a changing workforce. Employees expect their work and personal lives to be more integrated and expect a greater connection to their employer and the community. Engaged employees perform better, stay longer, and are often advocates for the company.
A mentoring program provides a way for employees to develop leadership skills, receive the guidance they need to grow in a job, and make a difference. It connects employees and forms greater bonds.
But, those are just a few benefits of a mentoring program.
1. A Mentor Program Shows Employees You Care
There are many purposes to a mentoring program. New hires can be assigned to a mentor as part of the onboarding program. Or, existing employees can be part of a mentoring program to help them grow and prepare for future opportunities. Mentoring also helps to develop leadership skills in the mentors.
New employees have a lot to learn! Providing a new hire with a mentor shows them that you care about their success. It gives them an informal resource outside of management. It provides them with a “buddy” who cares about their success. A mentor can introduce new employees and help foster relationships. They can educate the employee on where to go to solve problems and who really gets things done.
The mentor can be a sounding board for employee questions and frustrations. They can provide advice and insight as to why things are done the way they are.
Additionally, mentors can be a great help to existing employees. Struggling employees can benefit from a mentor and guide to help increase their odds of success. Mentors can provide an additional perspective on ways to advance within the company and help aspiring employees clarify goals. A mentor is the company’s unofficial advocate, who can provide valuable insight and help employees see why “illogical” rules make sense.
By providing a mentor to new, struggling, and aspiring employees, you show that you care about the employee’s success. You provide a valuable resource to your employees.
- Onboarding mentorships for new hires
- Mentor programs for aspiring employees
Diversity mentor programs help to grow underrepresented groups into leadership positions.
2. Mentorship Creates Higher Engaged Employees
A mentorship program helps to create more engaged workers by creating a better-skilled workforce. Employees are better trained. New employees benefit greatly from peer mentoring, which provides them with a friend who helps them get to know the company’s ropes. A peer mentor teaches new employees how things are done and educates them on the company’s culture.
A mentor helps employees develop relationships across the organization and understand the business’s power structure and politics. They can provide feedback to the mentee regarding skills that should be improved or expanded. Both the mentor and the mentee become more engaged workers.
- Increased relationships
- Increased engagement
- Specific feedback geared toward the growth of the mentee
3. Mentors Report Increase Job Satisfaction
Although it’s probably safe to say that mentees gain job satisfaction by having a mentor and a guide, mentoring has excellent benefits for the mentor. According to one study, mentoring significantly increases the mentor’s job satisfaction. Mentors are more satisfied with their jobs and have a greater commitment to the organization.
Here’s another benefit, providing career mentoring was most associated with career success.
Mentoring helps to foster a more positive work environment. It helps to create social and professional support within the organization. The mentor gets to share their knowledge and expertise, and the mentee gets to learn from another. It helps to build leadership with your mentors. All of these factors contribute to greater job satisfaction.
Mentoring Tip: Not all mentors need to be a higher-level manager. While higher-level managers are needed to help build mid-level managers, mid-level employees are perfect for mentoring entry-level employees. In this way, everyone within your organization can grow and build skills.
4. Mentorship Grows Employees’ Skills For Free!
Education and training can be costly. Mentorship is a great way to expand employee’s skills and knowledge with little to no cost. The time spent mentoring should be paid time, and you may want to have some program perks such as occasional lunch meetings or extra SWAG. But, mentoring costs far less than other training programs, continuing ed, or other skills classes.
Mentorship may actually improve your organization’s effectiveness as individual employees grow and produce more. Your experienced or highly skilled employees, as well as your leadership, benefit from providing mentoring. It’s a way for senior employees to pass along their knowledge and expertise. Highly technical or skilled employees can provide mentoring and help newer employees understand the job’s intricate unwritten nuances. It is also a means by which leaders can provide succession planning for when they retire or leave an organization.
Mentoring helps the mentee by providing them with greater skills, unwritten knowledge, and a clearer path for advancement. It increases their skillset and can allow them to use hidden talents.
5. Mentoring Encourages Greater Collaboration
Experienced and newer employees may not get a great chance to interact with each other outside their primary job duties. Mentoring changes that. It provides a way for those on both sides of mentoring to interact and learn from each other. New employees often have a fresh perspective that is forgotten with time and experience. Mentors can be reminded of these questions, ideas, and enthusiasm. They can also see their own growth within the organization. This helps to erase some of astigmatism that may occur between senior and new employees.
It can also help across departments when you employ a mentoring program that crosses department or team boundaries. It helps employees form relationships and to understand other perspectives better.
6. Mentors Help Employees Avoid Burnout
Mentors provide a sounding board. They can help guide an employee to better decisions, greater compilations, and help them avoid the same mistakes. They can help the employee to adopt a long-term view. Additionally, a mentor can help guide a stressed-out employee to other resources within and without the organization. Mentorship provides employees with a built-in resource for when they are stressed out and encounter difficulties.
Additionally, the increased network and relationships that mentorship helps to build can provide a support system for employees, even during life difficulties.
All of these things can help employees from reaching burnout. It can help them to manage the stresses of work and to see the green grass in your organization before they chase it in another organization.
7. Provide Employees With Great Unbiased Feedback
An employees’ mentor should not be the person giving annual reviews or their direct manager. It should be another leader or employee in the organization who can be in the mentee’s corner. This allows the mentee to get feedback without adding concerns that it will affect their annual review raises or future promotion. It provides another voice of reason and guidance. A mentor will get a chance to see skills, abilities, and aptitudes that direct managers may miss.
Plus, the mentor can provide judgment and reason regarding certain “traditions,” political power, or other employee’s quirks. They can help to soothe a rash employee’s impulses. These are only a few ways that mentors provide invaluable feedback to mentees.
8. Grow Your Leaders
Millennials are the largest generation of workers in the U.S. They are the eventual future of your business. Yet, millennials tend to believe that most companies have “no ambition beyond profit,” according to a recent study by Deloitte. Millennials are not just the leaders of tomorrow but are becoming the leaders of today. In the same study, 2 out of 3 millennials hoped to move on from their current job within four years.
However, that number drastically drops when millennials are paired with a strong mentor. 83% of millennials with mentors are satisfied with their work-life. Mentors, who share company values and beliefs, help millennial mentees to gain greater loyalty to their employer because they gain the insight that the organization has a purpose beyond profits. This fosters loyalty.
Mentoring can be a great way to train successor leaders. GE provides a “leader in residence” program where executives rotate responsibilities. Part of that includes a week of mentoring and training employees and managers.
Reverse mentoring can be another great way to train leaders. In reverse mentoring, younger workers with new skills mentor experienced employees. These younger employees also learned from leadership while mentoring them. For example, a younger employee could mentor an executive on using social media or why a live video feed is essential and effective. They can mentor leaders on reaching younger generations or portraying the “heart” of the organization. These interactions lead younger workers to understand better how the leaders of the organization think. At some point, advice is given in reverse, and joint mentorship occurs.
