I recently posted an article on the benefits of mentorship for mentors and mentees.

I highly recommend finding an excellent mentor and/or mentee for your career development. And the benefits don’t stop at the individual; companies are well advised to encourage mentorship, or even set up a mentorship program.

Company Benefits of Mentorship

+ According to a LinkedIn survey 94% of employees would stay at their current company longer if their employer offered more learning and career development opportunities.

+ According to CNBC 90% of mentees report being happy in their career.

+ Coqual has found that:

• 57% of mentors expand their skillset, compared to 40% non-mentors.
• 41% of mentors are more likely to pick up tasks they don’t like to do, compared to 26% of non-mentors.

Additionally, all of the benefits for mentors and mentees mentioned in my other article, such as their rates of promotion, are a huge benefit to the company as well.

How to set up a Mentorship Program at your Company

There are different levels of investment that People Operation professionals can put into creating a mentorship program.

Low Effort

Many of the early stage startups I work with at AdAstra Talent Advisors do not have bandwidth to set up a robust formal mentorship program. If this is your situation you can incorporate information into your onboarding process informing new hires of the value of mentorship for both sides of the relationship. Let all employees know that mentorship is encouraged. A few other suggestions to encourage mentorship are to:

– Host a company sponsored monthly lunch where mentors and mentees are encouraged to meet. This helps to make teammates aware of mentoring and also demonstrates that the company encourages it.

– Post a shared document or webpage where people interested in mentoring and being mentored can add their information and connect easily.

– Consider adding resource links to a webpage or document. For example, you might link to my article on the benefits of mentorship for mentors and mentees, or post a brief guide on “getting started with mentorship”.

– If your organization is small, you can also direct people to seek mentors outside of your organization, as there are matching programs specifically for mentorship.

Medium Effort 

Facilitating mentorship further may look like adding to the Low Effort method by having a People Operations professional assign mentors / mentees to employees who are interested in participating on either side, and offering new hires a chance to have a mentor right when they join. Keep in mind that these programs need continuous nurturing and facilitation. It can be discouraging if someone assigned to a mentor or mentee does not experience a committed partner. The People Operations pro can create a plan to regularly encourage collaboration between the partners.

High Effort

From there you can implement even more robust programs by doing research on successful existing mentorship programs to implement your own, working with a mentorship consulting organization, or to have a third party organize and run a mentorship program for you!

Check out my post on LinkedIn and please let me know what you think. Let’s start a conversation!