To develop a winning culture in an organization you need to push the right talent into high-performing employees and for this wholesome task you need to focus on structured mentoring. With structured mentoring, you will get a framework to maximize the benefits by introducing the right skills, techniques, and methods. Besides this, a good mentoring program follows the criteria of mentor matching to offer professional development and additional growth opportunities for your employees.
Very clearly, investing in mentoring programs is an effective way of learning and developing skills so that you can come up with more knowledge and confidence to represent your work or organization you are working with. These days such mentoring apps are getting big approval from both parties (mentor and mentee) as it’s the best way to find out more talent, boost the confidence level, and polish the skills as well. So, with this informal learning method you can reach your goals but all you need to do is choose the best mentoring platforms to guide newcomers or experienced ones easily.
For the successful onboarding of new employees and long -term development of existing ones, it’s necessary to determine the right mentor for a particular mentee. And well, for this you need to formulate the mindful task of mentor matching. You need a mentoring platform who provides a helpful confidant mentor to offer needed skills to the employees. FYI, under mentor matching programs the well-performing employees are selected/targeted to reach their full potential by offering extra input for their growth. Although it’s totally different from performance management.
To get the best out of these structured mentoring make sure you keep a few things in mind :
- Never make the mistake of not following the right way of mentoring that is a clear structure for mentoring. So as to allow for connections across the organization, sticking to the idea of structuring mentoring is important.
- Make it accessible to all employees(newcomers and experienced)
- Create mentoring relationships across the organization so that to get its complete benefits.
How to improve the reach of a mentoring program?
Many times a common fear of not working out comes in mind while choosing mentoring programs for your workplace. And a genuine reason behind this not working issue or negative feedback of mentoring programs is tactics of engaging employees. Hence, to keep the employees engaging in your mentoring program here are some interesting tactics:
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Explain or Clarify Program Outline
It’s prior to clearly explaining about the program outline such as what are the actual goals, responsibilities, and expected benefits from your mentoring program. By providing the outline of the mentoring program, it becomes easy for the mentors as well to structure their sessions smoothly and build accountability to proceed on the right one.
Make sure to address how much effort and time you both (mentor and mentees) need to commit. Although you can also explain regarding the pre-work required in case.
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Allow Self-matching
To set a stage of a more fruitful relationship for mentees/participants, it is important to use the approach of mentor matching. Different organizations have different algorithms to match mentors and mentees. Well, a good idea of mentoring relationships can be done by creating a list of mentees with their attributes and needs and available mentors and their attributes and expertise.
This process of matching is more transparent as it is based on mutual interests and alignment of mentor and mentees.
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Explore Different Formats
Topical mentoring has clearly defined goals and action plans which makes it possible to extend it to other models as well such as virtual mentoring or one-to-many group mentoring. In case, opting for a non-traditional format, provide guidelines for a group mentoring program. Providing guidelines about different formats of mentoring helps the employees to choose the best for them.
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Build Mentoring Support Systems
Do not assume that setting up a mentoring program in an organization doesn’t need further support systems. Well, to make it productive it needs ongoing support. To flourish it, make sure to include formal training for both mentors and mentees, creating peer networks for both, and providing space to express concerns of mentor and mentee.
5. Gamification
You can implement a handy tool of gamification to provide short term/immediate gratification to keep the employees motivated till the end of the mentoring program.
6. Show the actual benefits.
Show them success stories and some case studies to engage their participation. Try to share the valid proof of benefits you get by joining mentoring programs. Voicing about the benefits, great experiences, and overall value of the program boosts them to take it seriously.
