Corporate mentorship programs have become one of the most important learning & development strategies being employed by companies in recent years because they help to bridge the gap between junior and senior employees. With corporate mentoring, new employees can quickly learn about the company while building lasting relationships with their mentors and accelerating their career and leadership development. This is obviously an impactful strategy for most companies and learning about the best practices for implementing a corporate mentorship program for your company may help you improve workplace relationships, increase productivity and raise employee satisfaction.
Empirical information from companies who have implemented different forms of corporate mentorship programs has revealed that there are many different ways to implement them. Considering the areas of your company that you want to improve and what might best fit your practices is a good place to start. Here is a list of best practices that you can consider for setting up a corporate mentoring program for your company.
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Define the program’s goal
Beginning from the point of your company’s strengths and weaknesses is the best. Integration issues after onboarding? Consider creating a mentorship program to guide and welcome new members to your team. Issues with transitioning employees to leadership roles? Consider creating a mentorship program to pair junior leaders with senior leaders to begin training junior employees for leadership.
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Decide on the type of mentoring
Defining the goal will give you clues to the type of mentoring that will be best suited to your company. There are different types of corporate mentoring programs, from the traditional one-on-one mentoring to group mentoring programs that include three or more individuals sharing their knowledge with each other, every type of mentoring program has its individual benefits.
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Finding relevant mentors
The greater effort in the creation of a mentorship program should go into finding the right mentor for your employees, whether you decide on one-on-one mentoring or group mentoring. Pairing mentors and mentees requires a great deal of thought and effort to be done right.
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Establish timelines
Communicating a set schedule and timeline with participants (both mentors and mentees) can eliminate roadblocks that will hinder success. This way, participants will understand what their time commitment will be to the program vis-à-vis their other work and life commitments.
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Create a process
Work with organizational stakeholders to create a process for kickoff, review of success metrics, and end of each program. Adding methods to measure the program’s success will help you understand whether it’s benefiting to the participants. If your mentoring program has defined goals, including an assessment can help assure your team that they have gotten the most out of the program.
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Implement improvements regularly
The results of the assessments should inform future decisions that you can deploy to the program and the company as a whole to better achieve your goals. Doing this might also help employees feel that the company values their opinions.
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all winning strategy to the creation and implementation of corporate mentorship programs. But overall, what makes mentorship programs effective is that they can provide a platform for two-way conversations that are honest and can have a lasting impact on the mentees’ performance as they navigate their career paths, improve the leadership skills of the mentors, and contribute to the organization’s success.
Need assistance with creating effective corporate mentorship programs? Send an email to ebere@riseandleadwomen.com and we will revert with some practical advice on how your company can implement successful mentorship programs based on real-world best practices.