In a rapidly evolving working world, it’s becoming more important than ever that organisations offer their employees as much support as possible. With more and more businesses struggling with ever reducing employee retention and engagement rates, mentoring may just be a solution you need. As a young entrepreneur, I am aware of the importance of lessons from failure and challenges I’ve faced. Much like so many fellow entrepreneurs and business leaders out there, I recognise that in making mistakes, I can share these and help others to develop and ultimately go further too. I realise that the failures and mistakes of others can be incredibly helpful in my journey too. The fact is, there are few career paths so risky and full of failure as that of an entrepreneur, which explains why entrepreneurs, typically, engage with the concept of mentoring so much. However, the fact is that it’s not just entrepreneurs and business leaders who can benefit from mentoring – it’s everyone!
A lot of organisations have traditionally run mentoring programmes for their ‘top talent’ and senior 5% of employees. This is rapidly changing though, with mentoring programmes and schemes becoming more and more open to all. Technology platform PushFar is helping organisations to roll out effective mentoring offerings for all employees, reducing the resource required by HR and Learning and Development, while at the same time offering organisations a complete overview and management level insight into staff mentoring. So, why should organisations look at running mentoring programmes, both internally and externally?
- Mentoring Benefits Both Parties
When I talk about mentoring, I often convey the importance of it for those being mentored (the ‘mentees’). However, the reality is that mentoring can be incredibly empowering for the growth of both the mentor and mentee. In mentoring others, the mentor can learn a lot about challenges being faced and can develop and grow in themselves too. And, apart from anything else, being a mentor can give you a great sense of satisfaction.
- Mentoring Improves Employee Retention
Mentoring schemes are proven, through several studies, to positively impact employee retention. There are a few reasons why having a mentor will encourage an employee to stay with an organisation but perhaps the most significant is the fact that around half of all employee resignations are linked with management conflict. When you offer employees a mentor, you are providing them with a secondary and alternative channel of support and communication.
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- External Mentoring is Powerful for CSR
There is an increased focus on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and mentoring can be a great way to provide that. External mentoring to underprivileged children, youths and professionals can be very powerful and have a significant impact on both those being mentored and those offering mentoring too. The reward for individuals and organisations alike can be huge. External mentoring can even lead to recruitment longer-term too.
- Mentoring is Cost Effective Learning
Organisations will often spend vast sums of money on coaching and external training, and while these are of course of value, the reality is that there are often a lot of things that employees can help colleagues to learn through mentoring. Mentoring programmes setup internally encourage career development, growth, learning and knowledge sharing in a far more cost-effective way.
- Mentoring Can Reduce Repeat Mistakes
Entrepreneurs know that mistakes will be made, and the reality is that if you can reduce them you will grow faster and scale more effectively. This, as I referenced at the beginning, is why entrepreneurs are so keen on mentors. However, the reality is that we could all benefit from learning from the mistakes of others and ultimately try to avoid repeating them. Mentoring is a fantastic way of ensuring this is considerably reduced, by putting senior professionals who’ve been through similar past challenges in a mentoring role for junior professionals to learn from.
So, there you have it. Five (of many more) reasons why you should be offering mentoring programmes to your employees, getting involved with mentoring schemes and looking to mentoring to help tackle recruitment, CSR, engagement and retention challenges. If you are interested in setting up a cost-effective and resource-effective mentoring programme, head to PushFar.com to find out more.
By Ed Johnson
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