Mentoring at Work is Good for Business
Establishing a mentoring program at work is one way for a business to support employee training and development with little cost or risk. Mentoring can be a very effective way to develop employees and future leaders.
Many successful people in business, sports, and entertainment credit a mentor for helping them achieve their current success. In fact, people point to having several mentors focusing on different areas of development and at different stages in their career.
What is Mentoring?
- Mentoring involves a partnership between two people for the purpose of learning and development. It is most successful when both partners have a clear goal that guides their relationship.
- Mentoring can involve:
- sharing career stories, decisions, failures and successes;
- partners working together on a project;
- one partner job shadowing the other;
- a buddy system – where an experienced employee trains a new employee;
- giving career advice;
- any other relationship where the parties share information and help develop leadership skills .
- Mentoring is no longer restricted to a senior person leading a junior employee. Now days the relationship can benefit both partners. New workers have technology skills, application skills and new ways of doing business to share with senior staff. Senior staff have industry history, knowledge and experience to share with junior staff.
As a small business – we don’t have the leadership or time to mentor.
- A mentoring program does not need to be limited to people within your organization; mentors can be experts or leaders from your business partners, professional or personal network.
- Technology has eliminated the need for people in a mentoring program to work in the same city or country or to meet face to face.
- A successful mentoring program does not need to be time-consuming. It does require commitment. Usually 2 to 3 hours per month is sufficient.
Benefits of Mentoring:
- No or minimal cost involved.
- Can be informal or formal.
- Time commitment is flexible and is up to the individual partners. It is ok to invest in the relationship for a short period of time.
- Partners do not need to work in the same functional area, organization, city or even country. In fact, by reaching outside your field or organization you may gain access to skills and knowledge not otherwise available.
- Both partners in the relationship typically benefit – whether you feel good from “paying it forward” as the mentor or you gain valuable insight and leadership skills as the mentee.
Mentoring is an attractive option for businesses with a limited budget for training and development. Developing employees and future leaders should be an important business goal and a mentoring program is one way to help your company achieve this goal.
Do you credit your success to a mentor? Share your story.
