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Maintain Your Success

Mentoring Programs

Mentoring programs involve pairing a more junior-level employee with a more senior-level employee for the purposes of professional and personal growth. In well-designed programs, both the mentor and the mentee experience this type of growth.

Mentoring programs are an invaluable tool for building bench strength within the organization, and for increasing the capabilities of every individual in the workforce. In addition to creating a more skilled workforce, having a mentoring program can greatly help with employee retention issues – many employees (particularly so-called “Generation X and Generation Y” employees) need to work in an environment that provides challenge and development opportunities, and mentoring programs can help meet this need.

As the pace of today’s business environment continues to accelerate, successful organizations realize that they can no longer wait for needed mentoring and coaching to occur naturally -- with today’s fast-paced environments, this “natural” or informal mentoring does not occur with any regularity. In addition, having a more formalized mentoring process allows the organization to shape the content and curricula of the mentoring program, helping to ensure that organizationally-relevant skills and competencies are developed as part of the process.

Most mentoring programs are at least one year in duration, with a formalized kick-off meeting, quarterly group follow-up meetings, and ongoing mentor/ mentee meetings to implement the mentee’s development plan and evaluate progress. Those participating as mentees generally set goals in categories such as the following:

  • “Professional Development” goals (i.e., leadership skills and managerial competencies)
  • “Company Knowledge” goals (i.e., learning more about their current organization, including the inter-relationships of key departments, learning more about business operations, learning more about corporate culture issues, etc.)
  • “Personal Goals” (i.e., finishing a college degree or pursuing a graduate degree; quitting smoking, learning a foreign language, etc.).

The setting of goals in each of the above categories results in a well-rounded development plan for each program participant.

While the format and content of a mentoring program needs to be customized to capture the business outcomes most important to the organization, most mentoring programs include the following steps:

  • Identifying the desired purpose and outcome of the mentoring program, and developing a program structure to meet these objectives (i.e., determining program length and content; determining if a 1-on-1 or team-based mentoring approach is appropriate, etc.)
  • Determining how the mentoring program aligns with existing talent management, training, succession planning, and other human capital strategies
  • Identifying key internal resources to sponsor, implement, and provide ongoing support for the program
  • Determining program participants (identifying criteria for mentee selection, identifying a pool of mentors, identifying mentee participants)
  • Determining the program kick-off and Orientation logistics (length of program, determining a meeting site appropriate for the unique demands of mentoring programs, etc.)
  • Creating training materials, development plan formats, and other program materials
  • Conducting the Orientation program, monitoring mentee progress, and evaluating the mentoring program
  • Preparing an overall summary of program results

PDP can provide assistance with all aspects of mentoring program design, and can help ensure that your mentoring efforts are a success.

Cick here for additional information on mentoring programs.