A mentor is someone who helps you develop your skills, make better decisions, and gain new perspectives on your life and career. As a mentee, your mentor will use your experience to provide guidance about your career or life now and in the future. Mentoring programs are structured learning relationships that are established within an organization. It aims to provide employees with guidance from other employees with specific skills and knowledge.
Organizations must have structured programs to provide each employee with a positive role model to help them achieve their development goals. For your leaders to take advantage of the benefits of a mentoring program, it helps to have the numbers to back it up. The purpose of implementing a mentoring program may be to promote a higher level of employee engagement. Mentoring programs follow a fairly simple structure, regardless of the type of program you're running.
Mentoring provides the mentor with an opportunity to give back to the company by helping to train new and future employees, making those around them more competent and satisfied. The best mentoring program you can offer is one that meets the unique needs of your organization and your team members. Business mentoring and corporate mentoring programs are growing at a rapid pace, and 84 percent of Fortune 500 companies now offer mentoring programs and innovate their approach. In addition to promoting a culture of learning, mentoring programs strengthen the culture as a whole by making it more inclusive.
The question to ask yourself is not if your company needs a mentoring program, but what it would be like if there were no mentors if your company could afford it. Instead, mentors and mentors can commit to a weekly or monthly conference call program where they register and immerse themselves in the task of giving and receiving mentoring. Mentoring is important because it gives employees the opportunity to develop and become more competent in their roles, as well as to prepare for future growth opportunities. Joining a mentoring community is one of the best ways to learn about new types of mentoring programs, innovations in the industry, and the best practices of mentoring programs from real professionals.
Once both parties realize the value of mentoring, it's much easier to get the budget and time needed to continue learning and development initiatives and turn your company into a true learning organization. Many mentoring programs begin with an initial party (either virtual or in-person) where participants can see all the other participants in the program.
