The Importance of Mentoring

This research report includes an analysis and evaluation of planning and mentoring program for organizations. The prime purpose of the report is to understand mentoring program and develop a program that helps organization to plan, implement and evaluate the strategy. The proposed strategy seeks to provide business with the opportunity for mentoring relationship to create rapport, mutual trust and teamwork. Mentoring program is kind of a process in which specific skills and knowledge of individuals are used to guide the people in an organization who need the same skills and knowledge to perform the work and responsibilities. Generally, mentoring is taken as the process of delivering uninterrupted guidance and assistance to others by playing  role of positive role model or independent resource that help individual to enhance the attainment of task and responsibilities.

When it comes to mentoring, Reeves (2010) mentioned that there are two different parties who are involved in mentoring –mentor and the mentees. Certainly, the mentor has enormous knowledge and can offer a comprehensive insight to individual who need it the most. On the contrary, the mentee is the individual who must acquire the wisdom. Mutual trust and two way relationship and communication is the base of the mentor program. The individuals or the participants in the mentor program can be both young and old, who tend to share similar values as well as personal goals in a mutually respectful way and this eventually lead to a more enriched life for both the parties. In this context, Kashiwagi,.,Varkey and Cook (2013) commented that an effective mentoring program might help to address the barriers as well as generate opportunities for success. This means that knowledge and alternatives developed through this partnership program enable learners to explore variety of different career opportunities. Thus, when it is considered from an organizational perspective or business, existing employees or the newly employed individuals can learn new things with the help of the wisdom of mentors –individuals can effectively understand their job responsibilities and perform them accordingly (Pololi and Evans 2015). The mentoring program also helps the individuals to achieve their personals and objectives.

According to Kohn (2014), implementing business in today’s competitive environment might require low –cost but high quality solutions and thereby, establishment of a mentoring program may enable the business to use resource and skills accordingly. This means that the development of talents in a strategic manner certainly contributes to the growth, innovation and bottom line. The purpose of such program creates a sense that employees are valuable asset to the company.

• Identifying the purpose of mentoring relationship/ pre-work:

The Mentoring Process

Team or the business should start asking the individuals or the mentees for their current resume, job description to learn and arrange mentorship program. According to Corner (2014), business should specify the domain or the area in which it wishes to develop the practical skills. Thereby, by gaining the information about the individual will help to generate a clear purpose which further contribute to the specific mentoring plan. For example, a business may want to create a personal development mentoring plan for the employees to enhance the leadership skills (Renn, Steinbauer, Taylor and Detwiler 2014).

• Session two: establishing an action plan

Once the mentors or planning authorities learned each other and mentees’ requirement, a collection of feedback should be arranged to learn about the goals of the mentees. For example, some individuals may wish to become supervisors or managers and on the basis of such requirement, the mentors should focus on 2 to 3 problem statements which could set the mentoring exercise.  Some common statements may include the following:

• I want to develop my communication skills that I can develop a good and professional client relationship
• I want  to see myself as a supervisor in coming two years
• I would develop a stronger professional network

This stage is one of the crucial ones in the process; hence the mentors should develop a mentoring exercise as well as specific tasks as homework for the mentees. The most effective task or the ways can be of mentoring the best practice to involve in concrete skills development activity which would help to make the mentoring exercise significant (Hadidi, Lindquist and Buckwalter 2013). The mentees should be asked to pick one genuine problem statement to work on that. For example, mentee may want to enhance his/her communication skills, so the problem statement should be made on the basis of the communication skill. Through the session, mentees should be guided with a specific action plan to address the problem statement (Drew 2014). The mentees should be helped with the visualization technique where they can start visualizing the problem and then solution. The organization needs to develop some key steps that should take place before next the meeting.

• Session three: Debrief mentoring exercise:

This session is about how the session exercise has been performed. If the exercise has been performed well, mentors need to identify what went well and what it actually meant for the coming future. If the exercise did not go well, mentors should identify the areas that need more consideration. On the other side, the mentees should take actions accordingly on the basis of exercise feedback.

Session four: Steps five repeat: The mentors and mentees both should continue the learning exercise in future session. This can be done by developing the same problem statement with new actions or working on a different problem statement in sequence.

Planning the Mentoring Program

Stoeger et al., (2013) mentioned that concrete mentoring exercise help individuals to experience the real-world success on the issues that are important to them. The stated program is effective because it is cost efficient to make the employees involved and empowered. Such programs enable the business to enhance the talents that business already as well as maximize productivity across the business.

If the above stated mentoring program is considered from a business perspective, it is worth stating that the program is most likely to be benefiting the organization and employees both. This means that overall outcome of the individuals and organization would be effective. Organizations. The business for its sustainability always looks for ways to reduce its operation cost keeping the quality of operation undamaged. Therefore, the mentoring program when done in a repetitive way scrutinizing the areas required, cost can be minimized and employees remain engaged and empowered. Particularly, when it comes to importance of the mentoring program, it is worth mentioning that the benefits of both employers and employees can be equal. For example, business benefits from the mentoring program because organization enjoys the benefits of better-trained as well as engaged workforce.

Moreover, the mentors in the program know the ropes in the organization, established relationship across the organisation and eventually enhance skulls that need to be enhanced upon. This means when the workforce is trained and skilled, business is most likely to gain the advantage of better workforce which means –increasing number of project undertaking, effective customer service caused by trained workforce, long-term client-business relationship. Employees feel that they are the valuable part of the organization and they work on developing the relationship with the clients for the sake of business.

Increasing job satisfaction is a mutual benefit to both employees and employers. When the subjective well-being level of the employees are high, business is most likely to gain benefits out of it, while employees also show a greater level of commitment to business.  Fornari et al., (2014) mentioned that mentoring program plays a very significant role in decreasing the employee turnover; this means the individuals who tend to serve as the mentors observe high job satisfaction and greater loyalty to organization. In addition to this, employees who need to look to develop career path often requires mentors and the most crucial benefit of such mentors, the process is time effective.

Enhanced organizational culture is one of the important business aspects achieved through the mentoring program. Law et al., (2014) mentioned that developing a mentoring program internally leads to enriched business culture that hold values both in learning and development. Employees associated with the business tend to develop a sense or feeling that their future is being invested if they come under a mentorship program with the mentors in the workplace. This means in the name of mentorship, employees actually find an effective career development. Moreover, the business can develop a collaborative learning environment in which learning is done through mutual trust and respect; consequently, employees find an open platform of gaining knowledge.

Implementing the Mentoring Program

Personal and professional development is another mutual benefit for both employees and employers. Corner (2014) mentioned that by creating a pair between employees and mentors, organisation can create a safe place for the employees learn and gain knowledge. Under such program, employees gain the confidence of making mistakes because they understand that they are in a constant learning process. Therefore, the process eventually creates culture and innovation.

Teamwork ability is also one of the crucial point that business understands when designing a mentorship program for the employees. When employees work under the mentors, they gain a set of abilities and competencies; and thereby, working in a team is an ability that directly comes from the program. When a group of individuals work together with mentor, they experience how a teamwork should be achieved. Moreover, mentorship program should start with goals and based on the goals, exercise are performed. Likewise, teamwork also starts with certain goals and everyone in the team work towards the goal. This tendency can genuinely come from the mentorship program.

Stress and anxiety is another concern that can be addressed with the mentorship program. This means when the employees face certain issues in the workplace, they most likely to think twice about approaching the manager. Teammates are not sometimes experienced enough to resolve the issue but a mentor in the workplace is someone who can always show up as guidance. Reeves (2010) mentioned that knowing a mentor is always soothing to employees. When a new individual or employee is assigned under a mentorship program, mentors can also gain benefit from the relationship. The mentee is supposed to intentionally do the same for the next on boarding employee. This means with the help of a formal program, the newly employed individuals may find it easier to join as well as follow the guidelines.

When the importance is considered under a macro level, it can be stated that mentoring program helps the business to achieve talent acquisition gaols just like the succession planning and this ensures a solid leadership development. Organization can enhance the talent acquisition efforts and this means new employees remain aware of organization’s career development opportunities.

Conclusion

Mentoring remains as one of the most significant and effective development opportunities that an organization could provide employees with the opportunities. It can be mentioned that an adequate guidance, encouragement and support of trusted and experienced mentors help the mentees with a long set of personal and professional benefits. This eventually result in enhanced performance in the workplace. It has also been identified that mentoring is different from training program in several ways apart from cost. The outcome of the report indicates that mentoring program gives employees a direct, hands-on experience to theory career development requirement.

References

Corner, J., 2014. The fast are eating the slow: Mentoring for leadership development as a competitive method. Industrial and Commercial Training, 46(1), pp.29-33.

Drew, J., 2014. How to start and run a mentoring program. Journal of Accountancy, 217(3), p.34.

Fornari, A., Murray, T.S., Menzin, A.W., Woo, V.A., Clifton, M., Lombardi, M. and Shelov, S., 2014. Mentoring program design and implementation in new medical schools. Medical education online, 19(1), p.24570.

Hadidi, N.N., Lindquist, R. and Buckwalter, K., 2013. Lighting the fire with mentoring relationships. Nurse Educator, 38(4), pp.157-163.

Kashiwagi, D.T., Varkey, P. and Cook, D.A., 2013. Mentoring programs for physicians in academic medicine: a systematic review. Academic Medicine, 88(7), pp.1029-1037.

Kohn, H., 2014. A mentoring program to help junior faculty members achieve scholarship success. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 78(2), p.29.

Law, A.V., Bottenberg, M.M., Brozick, A.H., Currie, J.D., DiVall, M.V., Haines, S.T., Jolowsky, C., Koh-Knox, C.P., Leonard, G.A., Phelps, S.J. and Rao, D., 2014. A checklist for the development of faculty mentorship programs. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 78(5), p.98.

Pololi, L.H. and Evans, A.T., 2015. Group peer mentoring: an answer to the faculty mentoring problem? A successful program at a large academic department of medicine. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 35(3), pp.192-200.

Reeves, T.Z., 2010. Mentoring programs in succession planning. State and Local Government Review, 42(1), pp.61-66.

Renn, R.W., Steinbauer, R., Taylor, R. and Detwiler, D., 2014. School-to-work transition: Mentor career support and student career planning, job search intentions, and self-defeating job search behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(3), pp.422-432.

Stoeger, H., Duan, X., Schirner, S., Greindl, T. and Ziegler, A., 2013. The effectiveness of a one-year online mentoring program for girls in STEM. Computers & Education, 69, pp.408-418.