Mentorship - Driving business culture to excellence
Originally introduced to mentoring in a corporate sense back in the early 1990s, the programmes I have seen rarely appear to fulfil their promise. This tends to be due to a lack of understanding of the benefits, throughout the organization. This inevitable means that mentoring is not effectively used.
BlueSky Cat is keen to reinstate the value of mentors and encourage organizations to reinvigorate the programmes they already have.
In the context of employment, a mentor is an independent person who can provide advice and guidance. This will both improve the career of a protégé and facilitate the development of the organization, by utilising all the potential and knowledge of the employee and the mentor.
One definition reads, ‘Help from one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking.’ (Megginson and Clutterbuck, 1995)
Mentorship can and does:
- Enable the integration of international companies
- Make the most of the diversity of culture, skills and gender available
- Maximise the business potential from the whole company in every country; the sum total being greater than the parts
A structured mentorship programme will enable the development of cohesive learning by the use of credible and influential employees engaged in supporting less experienced co- workers.
There are many benefits that have been cited over the years for mentorship. Most of them are very valid – but often there remains the question of whether the benefits were measured, proven or even what the organization needed at the time.
There are almost too many potential benefits from mentoring. It is necessary to know what is required of a programme, so it can be tailored to fit the unique conditions and intent of the organization.
The potential payback is worth the time and effort. For the organization the benefits include:
- Small changes that drive a big business improvement
- Getting the best of the best out of the people you have
- Challenging set views by introducing a different context or outcome
- Fostering an organization culture aligned with best practice and continual improvement
- Underpinning cultural and/or behavioural change programmes
At an individual level the benefits include:
- Transfer of knowledge
- Shared management expectations
- Accelerated leadership and collaborative development
- Challenge – seeing a different viewpoint
- Additional networking and introductions.
Research shows mentorship is a crucial part of success in business. Individuals who have been mentored are more likely to increase their productivity and skills.
Additional benefits include:
- Fostering consistently high practices across divisions – allowing employees to easily move across divisions
- Reduced risk to individual and companies when promoting into a ‘stretch’ position
- Reinforcement of company values (e.g. Honesty, Integrity, Punctuality, Respect, Flexibility..)
- Reinforcement of a positive approach to how we treat our employees
- Mentoring woven into development activities reinforces learning
- Exposure to different cultural norms
Metrics are essential to ensure the sustainability of the programme. The obvious ones are:
- Better business performance against similar competitors
- Promotion of more staff internally versus external recruitment ratio improvement over 2-5 years
- Reduced staff turnover (getting development and opportunities internally)
- Improved teamwork
- Well-motivated staff
- Staff survey shows employees understand and support the company vision and direction
- Improved project control and profitability
- Innovation
- Improved rating on ‘best company to work for’ surveys.
Contact BlueSky Cat to find out about their mentoring programmes on offer.