What do successful companies have? Excellent leaders. And with excellent leaders come excellent employees. Good leadership and guidance are essential in every organization. And one way to ensure that you lead and guide your employees productively is through an employee mentoring program.
The Advantages of an Employee Mentoring Program
An employee mentoring program can benefit an organization’s employee satisfaction, engagement, retention, and development efforts. A testament to how beneficial mentoring is to organizations is that 71% of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs. To further support the importance of mentoring, CNBC/SurveyMonkey’s 2019 Workplace Happiness Survey reports that 91% of their respondents who have mentors are satisfied with their jobs, with 57% being “very satisfied.” Here are some more advantages of having an employee mentoring program for your organization!
Higher employee performance
Educated and well-trained employees produce better results than those who lack training and knowledge.
When you have an employee mentoring program, you can better prepare your team for the tasks and responsibilities that they will have for their organization. And when they’re better prepared, they can do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
Of course, you’ve hired a talent because you found their skills and education fit for the job. However, that’s not enough. They have to be able to learn how to navigate your organization—your processes, policies, rules, regulations, etc.—and other know-hows that only employees or members of your company will know. Some of this you can teach through an onboarding program. However, others can be left to a mentor to teach their mentee.
Reducing turnover
One of the main benefits of mentoring programs is that mentors can play an immense role in an employee’s desire to stay with the company. Because a mentor is in a superior position over the mentee, they can affect a person’s experience in the organization and influence their retention, just like how managers can affect turnover and how some employees leave because of bosses and not companies.
A mentor can help work out an employee’s frustrations or concerns and help them build the skills they need for success. Mentors can also encourage mentees to stay with the company and grow there longer. This results to lower employee turnover. And when you have lower turnover rates, your company will have less financial and memory loss.
Save time and resources
Task concerns and questions can delay the job. But who can your new employees ask? By implementing mentors, employees with questions or concerns can go to their mentors whenever they have something to ask or solve. This process removes the wasted time when people go to one person or another to solve a problem, improving overall productivity.
Mentorships also reduce the need for formal training. “Project-based” mentors can help employees learn on the job rather than in a training room. It also allows managers and bosses to spend more time on their more urgent tasks for organizational success.
Succession planning
As sad as it is, no employee will stay in your company forever. They can leave for better opportunities, retirement, other priorities, and more. Employees quitting is even more debilitating if it’s your leaders who are resigning. That’s why an organization always has to ensure they have their next-generation leaders in place. Save your time and money by implementing mentoring programs as a part of your succession planning!
Having employees who can fill your vacant managerial positions with minimal training is highly valuable. This reduces the need for external hiring, as well as the need for resources that you use when you hire a new employee. Mentors can teach potential leaders the necessary leadership skills.
Employee mentoring programs can be a win-win situation for all the parties involved—the employee, the mentor, and the company. Are you ready to create yours?
