6 Compelling Reasons Your Company Needs A Mentorship Program

You’ve heard about mentoring before, but mentorship programs have some compelling benefits—and have new significance based on today’s landscape of work. With all the shifts, it is especially challenging to attract, retain, motivate, engage and develop people—but mentoring offers tons of benefits contributing to all of these.

Mentoring cannot be left to chance. While it’s true that some people are naturally good at seeking mentors, and others are naturally gifted at coaching and guiding others, the benefits of mentoring suggest you’re wise to create and fulfill more intentional programs that support mentoring in many forms.

1 – Mentoring Attracts (Think: Competitive Advantage)

One of the first things to know is that mentoring is a tremendous competitive advantage, especially in vying for the best and the brightest who are early in their career journeys. In fact, 85% of job seekers say they are more attracted to companies offering mentorship programs, and 82% of hiring managers agree that mentoring sets their organizations apart from others which a candidate might be considering, according to a poll by Express Employment Professionals.

And there is plenty of opportunity to differentiate compared with other companies. In fact, only 40% of hiring managers say their company offers it—and for companies who don’t already have mentoring programs, 52% say they plan to offer it in the future, based on Express Employment Professionals’ data.

By creating a program now, you send a message about how much you value employees and their learning and development—and you establish the means for connection, knowledge transfer and rewarding work. All of these will give you an advantage in recruiting and in motivating the best in your employees.

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2 – Mentoring Develops

Another key reason to offer mentorship programs is to upskill and reskill employees. Best practices in learning and development suggest multiple avenues toward learning are best—from formal classroom learning or online learning to on-the-job learning which occurs when employees roll up sleeves together to complete a project.

Mentoring is another aspect of a robust learning and development program not to be ignored. Fully 81% of respondents in the Express Employment Professionals poll said they offer mentoring as a way to upskill or reskill employees.

Connecting more experienced workers with those who are less seasoned, is a clear way to learn not only the technical aspects of a job, but also the nuances in terms of knowing what is expected, how to interact with customers (internal and external) and how to solve problems which inevitably crop up.

3 – Mentoring Fulfills

Another significant reason to offer mentoring programs work is because they enhance satisfaction and fulfillment among employees. When people had positive models for their work, they were more likely to say their work was fulfilling (68% with mentors, compared with 51% without), according to a poll of 4,000 respondents by Gallup and Amazon.

And when employees had mentors, they were more likely to have jobs which offered both autonomy and authority and they were more likely to feel good about their work and experience esteem based on their role, according to academic research published in the American Journal of Community Psychology.

Rewarding, fulfilling and satisfying work are all ingredients for employee retention, performance and happiness—good for people and good for business.

4 – Mentoring Connects

Another benefit of mentoring is that is connects people. More than half—52%—of companies offer mentorship programs to cultivate connections between employees, based on data from Express Employment Professionals.

And when people feel like they matter to others and are important to the community, they are more likely to stay with an organization, give more effort and experience greater happiness.

5 – Mentoring Protects

Mentoring is also a key strategy to protect knowledge within the organization. As significant numbers of employees retire, capturing and protecting their knowledge before they go is critical to a company’s ongoing success. To this end, 41% of companies use mentoring to reduce brain drain and 40% leverage mentoring to keep more senior employees engaged.

All of this speaks to the strategic benefits of knowledge—especially that which is tacit—or unwritten expertise based on experience, context and intuition. Tacit knowledge is uniquely transferred through working together, relationships, discussions and sharing—all hallmarks of mentorship processes.

6 – Mentoring Acculturates

Another key benefit of mentoring is the ways people learn about culture through a mentoring relationship. Much about culture is invisible—norms, assumptions and values—and these are often most effectively communicated through a mentor who can model choices, behaviors and approaches which work best within the organization’s culture.

Within a mentoring relationship, people can learn about the organization, and also experience encouragement from a mentor for their own unique contribution. Effective cultures achieve balance between celebrating what the individual brings and ensuring there is a fit to values and behaviors so the person can be effective within the organization.

Make It Happen

Build a great mentorship process by making it formal, and having people volunteer to be both mentors and mentees. Give the program time limits—for example six months or nine months—during which the mentor and mentee will interact.

Provide resources like guidelines or discussion questions for the mentor and mentee to use. And consider programs which embrace learning in groups as well as one-on-one and which ensure options for those who are more junior to learn from those who are senior as well as vice versa.

You can also ensure success in a mentorship program by starting small. Establish a pilot program and then gain feedback about what worked and what didn’t, so you can evolve your approach. Try a mentorship program within one department or just for newly hired employees.

The benefits of mentorship programs are so significant that it’s wise to begin now—and build the process as you learn what works best for your organization.