Which of the following is true regarding mentorship as a step in employee training and development?

Five Steps to Building a Successful Mentoring Program

Want to learn how to develop a mentoring program? That’s great. Mentoring is a proven approach to drive rich learning and development for both mentees and mentors. Mentoring also benefits the organization.

For employers, mentoring increases talent retention, promotion rates, and employee satisfaction for mentors and mentees.

University mentoring is proven to improve student retention, boost job placement rates, and increase alumni engagement when tapping alumni as mentors.

Starting a mentoring program is within your reach. But great mentoring programs don’t just happen. They are built through thoughtful planning and sustained commitment to guiding participants through the mentoring process while continually improving the program.

Deciding to implement a mentoring program is a great strategy for improving employee metrics like retention. HR.com’s 2021 State of Coaching and Mentoring Report found 67 percent of HR professionals feel mentoring leads to improved organizational performance. In addition, more than 50 percent also agreed their organization will place greater importance on coaching and mentoring over the next two years to combat feelings of isolation, burnout and stagnation. Meanwhile, a CNBC/SurveyMonkey found 9 out of 10 workers with a mentor said they were satisfied with their jobs; more than half rated themselves “very satisfied.”

As with any major project, proper planning is crucial to achieving your strategic mentorship goals. Mentoring programs can be highly impactful, but there are many factors that are critical to the success of your program. We’ve distilled our guidance into a video outlining the five key strategies for building a mentorship program template.

What is a Mentoring Program?

A formal mentoring program is a structured, often one-to-one relationship in a work, organization or academic setting. Mentoring allows people to learn from one another, providing a path to skill and knowledge transfer. Impactful mentoring programs train mentors and mentees to have productive conversations and meetings, providing them with career development tools and resources to accomplish set mentorship goals.

Starting a mentoring program requires:

• Identifying the purpose of mentoring and the vision for the program in your organization
• Understanding your mentor and mentee candidates
• Consistent communication and promotion to encourage mentoring longevity

When done right, a mentoring program in a professional setting is an enjoyable, rewarding experience for organizations and their people.

What are the Benefits of a Mentorship Program?

A well-planned, thoughtful mentoring program will encourage people to connect with others on a personal level and build strong, trusting relationships that motivate and guide toward future goals. The benefits of mentoring extend to mentors, mentees and their organizations. A mentoring program can also help students acclimate to college life, as well as prepare to graduate and enter the workforce. A mentoring program can help members of a professional association further their development and network with others in their industry.

What is the purpose of mentoring?

A mentoring program benefits the mentee/mentor relationship and helps the organization by building an inclusive workplace culture, centered on learning, sharing new ideas and creating a shared vision. A mentorship program can:

• Diminish isolation and exclusivity
• Increase engagement
• Improve retention rates
• Amplify skill development

Read on to learn the five steps to start a mentoring program.

Step 2. Attract Participants for Your Mentoring Program

The best designed mentoring programs won’t get far without effective program promotion, mentor recruitment, and mentoring training.

When formal mentorship programs are introduced in organizations, there is generally natural enthusiasm. Yet this enthusiasm doesn’t always translate into high participation rates. A common reason is poor promotion of the mentoring program. Don’t assume potential mentors and mentees understand the benefits. For many, this will be their first opportunity to participate in mentoring. You will need to convince them that participating is worth their time and effort. Beyond participants, key leaders and stakeholders will need to be educated on the benefits of the program and strategic value to the organization.

Consider the needs of mentors. Building a solid base of mentors can be a challenge. It is important to understand the positive and negative factors that impact mentor participation. Once you have identified them, look for creative ways to reinforce positive drivers and lower the hurdles of negative ones throughout the mentoring process. For example, mentors are often busy people with limited time to spend. How can you help mentors be more efficient with the time they have to dedicate to mentoring? Also consider recognition and reward strategies. Formally recognizing mentor involvement can be very motivating and help attract additional mentors to the program.

Lastly, productive mentoring doesn’t just happen. Provide mentorship training to mentors and mentees regarding the goals of the program, participant roles, mentoring best practices, and your mentoring process. Help mentors and mentees clarify their own mentoring objectives. The need for mentoring training and guidance doesn’t end after the initial orientation. Provide tips and best practices throughout the mentoring program to help participants stay on track and get the most out of the program.

• Promote the benefits to participants and stakeholders
• Consider recognition and rewards for mentoring participation
• Provide mentoring training and reinforcement throughout the program

Chronus mentoring software provides best practices, content, templates and workflows to recruit, enroll and train program participants.

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How to Start a High-Impact Mentoring Program

Step 4. Guide Your Mentoring Relationships

Now that your participants are enrolled, trained, and matched, the real action begins.

It is also where mentoring can get stuck. Left to themselves, many mentorships will take off and thrive. But some may not. Why? Because mentoring is not typically part of one’s daily routine. Without direction and a plan, the mentoring relationship is vulnerable to losing focus and momentum. That is why providing some structure and guidance throughout the mentorship is vital to a successful mentoring program.

One best practice in successful mentoring programs is to ensure all mentorships have goals and action plans. This serves two purposes:

1. It brings focus at the onset, which helps a mentoring relationship get off to a good start.
2. It adds accountability to accomplish something.

Provide all mentoring relationships with timely and relevant “help resources” (topical content, mentoring best practices, etc.) throughout the mentorship. Bite-sized content delivered at key points is ideal.

As a mentoring connection progresses, establish checkpoints where mentorships report on their progress. Lastly, have a formal process that brings closure to the mentoring experience. Within this process, provide an opportunity for both the mentor and mentee to reflect upon what was learned, discuss next steps for the mentee, and provide feedback on the benefits of the program and process.

Chronus mentoring software makes guiding or facilitating your program’s connections easy, enabling your participants to be highly productive.

Learn how software can provide guidelines for mentors and mentees

What Can You Achieve with Chronus?

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