Due to drastic changes in today’s economy, many companies are facing difficulties, and in response they are making drastic changes within their businesses. These changes leave many employees without a sense of direction or support. In order to meet these challenges, some businesses have created mentoring programs, pairing workers with a mentor or supervisor. Mentors develop one-on-one relationships with workers, providing individualized support and helping to guide them through workplace changes. Below are some ways that HR professionals can design a successful mentoring program within their organization.
What are your objectives?
To have a mentoring program that will be successful, the program needs to have clearly defined objectives. Objectives should target how to improve employee efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness. To achieve this, mentors should be able to cultivate young talent for successful competition in today’s market, as well as acquaint them with the company’s culture. Other objectives include helping workers to develop leadership skills, retaining key employees, and strengthening and solidifying the company’s culture. Such objectives, when clearly defined, will help the organization to obtain the right tools needed to meet rapid workplace challenges and changes.
Identifying candidates for the program
When designing a mentoring program, it is important to narrow down your target population and tailor the program according to that group’s needs. Mentoring is not for everyone, and participation in the program should be voluntary. Your criteria for assessing potential program participants should include qualities such as intelligence, emotional maturity, a willingness to learn, energy, self-confidence, team skills, decision-making ability, loyalty, and dependability.
Identifying mentors for the program
Not everyone can be a mentor, and this even applies to some who are in senior management. If someone communicates their willingness to mentor, make sure to interview that person, and be tactful if they are found not to be ready When identifying a possible mentor, use criteria that relate to the individual’s skill in sharing information, coaching abilities, teaching and following up on that instruction, as well as spending time with junior employees.
Mentoring program launch
To be successful, your mentoring program should have a training period for both the mentors and the mentored, where they can learn what the program is about, how it will work, and how it will benefit them. The training mentor has a challenging job, as he or she needs to be skilled in coaching, giving and receiving feedback, and using different teaching styles with different employees. Moreover, it’s important that the mentor be able not only to work with protégés, but also be able to successfully juggle their other duties so that the employees they are mentoring are not neglected.
Managing the mentoring program
One of the biggest problems that mentoring programs face is that mentors do not follow up on employee progress after an initial meeting or session. Appointments can be postponed, deadlines can be missed, and some mentors make their responsibilities in this respect a low priority. When managing a mentoring program, it is a good idea to have regular assessment meetings to determine how the mentor is doing, as well as to determine whether protégés feel as if they are gaining worthwhile experience within the program.
Employing mentoring programs are a viable option for dealing with changes and meeting the challenges in today’s business world. However, for your program to be successful, it’s important that it is developed and designed properly, that the right junior staff members are chosen to participate in the program, and that the right senior members of staff are chosen to mentor.
