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Improve Employee & Company Outcomes and Catapult Personal Growth with Mentoring

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01/17/2023

“Most employees need to be managed less and mentored more.”

Mentors can have a tremendous impact on those they serve – I know mine have. This impact carries positive consequences for the health of your company, the well-being of your employees, and for your own personal development.

Which companies offer mentoring programs and why?

All companies can suffer setbacks when they lose top-level and high-producing employees. The companies that suffer least are the ones that make mentoring part of their company culture, both formally and informally. Moreover, good companies provide continual career advancement training, arrange for knowledge transfer sessions, promote employee growth, and provide mentoring opportunities. I said, “good companies,” but I really mean the smartest, the most competitive, and the most successful companies. According to Forbes,

Those stats are compelling. They are also recent. Current studies on mentoring show it is still just as important today, if not more so. On the flip side, only about 25% of small and medium-sized companies use mentors.

A strong culture of mentoring benefits the employees and the company. Some benefits of mentoring for the mentor and mentee include:

Company Loyalty/Retention
Increased Engagement/Productivity
Continued Professional Development/Advancement

On the surface, company loyalty and retention seem a bigger benefit to the company, which will spend less time and money trying to hire and train new employees. However, they also indicate that employees feel good about their careers. They can feel more stable, experience less worry and anxiety on work-related matters, and spend less time searching for better work opportunities. In short, employees stay longer because they are happy where they are. That feeling of well-being and contentment in the workplace is an important benefit that can result from mentoring.

Increase your company’s ability to compete

Mentoring also means that your employees are greater assets to the company. One of the biggest – if not the biggest – assets a company has is its human capital or organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge is “the different knowledge and skills that the employees of a large company or organization have, and how these can be used and shared to make the organization more effective.” Increase in organizational knowledge increases a company’s competitive advantage and ability to thrive. A sudden decrease in organizational knowledge will have the opposite effect.

What would happen to your organization if your highest producing employees routinely dedicated a small amount of time to work with more junior employees? You would see expanded organizational knowledge and create added redundancies to mitigate the impact of unexpected staffing departures. So, risk decreases, and the power of your people and your organization increases.

Mentoring benefits your company and your employees. So, what’s next?

Next is action. Start small if you need to but do something.

Encourage managers in your organization to take on a mentor mentality
Encourage staff to engage in mentoring informally

Facilitate mentoring between junior and senior staff
Formalize mentoring in a way that makes sense for your organization

There are many readily available resources for starting a mentoring program— for example, this guide to starting from scratch by Indeed.

My company doesn’t have a mentoring program. What can I do?

Regardless of whether your company has a formal mentoring program, you should get a mentor. If you have a growth mindset, you need to find a way to grow. First, consider your personal goals for growth. Then look inside your organization and find out who could mentor or facilitate a mentor. If you have no viable options inside your organization, then look outside. Make it happen.

If you are senior staff, offer to mentor. There are truly only two types of people, those who build others up and those who don’t.

Closing thoughts

I have had the opportunity to work with several mentors throughout my young life and career. Each has had an impact and accelerated my growth in various areas. Some were aligned as mentors through more formal channels, and some were informal. Some of my mentors came in the form of employers, managers, trainers, co-workers, and counselors. Regardless of the form they took, each one provided guidance and a growth path that empowered me to do better than I did before. Too many names to call out, but you know who you are, and If you are reading this, thank you.

What impact has a mentor had on you?

Manage less. Mentor more.