Why mentoring makes sense
24 Apr 2022
What is likely to make you stay with your current employer?
Good pay, good conditions, a few perks?
Probably, but one of the unsung ways in which employees can be made to feel valued is through mentoring schemes.
You may well have heard about the Great Resignation. That’s the feared talent drain caused by a mass of resignations in the wake of the pandemic as workers re-assess their work-life balance and calibrate their feeling of belonging to their employers.
One recent survey suggested as many as 16 million office workers feel no great connection to their workplace and that as many as 72% are considering handing in their notice within the next year.
If this strikes a chord, you might want to raise the benefits of mentoring programmes with your managers.
There are few better ways of developing a strong, lasting connection between a member of staff and their company that the sort of direct investment in skills and support which mentoring represents.
A recent study showed that 97% of people with a mentor believe they are valuable, while mentees are also promoted five times more often than those who are left to their own devices.
Other benefits of mentoring include:
- Digital mentoring can be rolled out at scale creating a sense of cohesion and inclusion across a team
- Mentoring also brings virtual workers into contact with their colleagues and helps cement their place in an organisation
- 89% of mentees will later become mentors themselves, creating a virtuous circle which can enrich a company and aid retention for many years
You would have thought with all these benefits that every company in the country would have a flourishing mentorship programme. But far from it.
In fact, just 37% of UK professionals have a mentor and only 40% of HR decision-makers have programmes in place specifically to address the lack of belonging which is fuelling the Great Resignation.
If your company is one of the majority without any scheme in place, now is the time to act.
With a recruitment crisis in full swing and businesses across the country adjusting to the new world of work brought about by the pandemic, there has never been a better time to promote the value of mentoring programmes to you bosses.
By making a moderate investment in developing existing staff, they will both insulate themselves as much as possible from the icy blast of the recruitment crisis and also develop the sort of staff loyalty which will help retain the best staff for many years to come.
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