At Arden Coaching, we’re huge proponents of company-wide mentorship programs. Pairing up those who are old and new on the job, from different departments and different backgrounds promotes a strong system for personal and professional growth.
If you’re interested in seeing how your company would benefit from starting a mentorship program, check out Arden’s article that explores seven long-term benefits that serve mentor, mentee, and company.
1. Mentorship Programs Show That You’re Willing to Invest in Your Employees
Mentorship programs help employees grow within their roles. Though mentoring leads to a direct benefit for employees, it doesn’t necessarily benefit the company in the same outright way. Because of this, pursuing a mentorship program shows that your organization really values the development of its employees.
Bonus tip! This is extremely appealing to many millennials who are increasingly motivated to work for an organization that provides them with opportunities to grow their own skills.
2. Mentorship Programs Are Virtually Free to the Company
Another compelling aspect of starting a mentorship program at your organization is that it’s virtually free to do so. It takes a little bit of time to coordinate mentor matchups and get employees excited to take part, but beyond that there’s no major cost that needs to be figured into the budget.
3. Mentorship Programs Help to Preserve Business Knowledge
Your employees learn a lot over the course of their careers with your company. A top executive who may have started out in a midlevel position and worked their way up gained knowledge about important processes, structures, and programs as they did so. But as these long-term, invested members move on and retire, they often take the institutional memory they’ve gained with them.
Mentorship programs give companies the opportunity to preserve and recycle this high level of knowledge, allowing younger employees to accelerate the learning process.
4. Mentorship Programs Help Teams to Develop Stronger Relationships
Mentoring is a unique learning opportunity that consists of one-on-one interactions and teachings. This open-door policy for questions and the frequent nature of mentoring sessions allow mentors and mentees to develop stronger connections. Successful mentor pairings work to establish a support system for each employee.
5. Mentorship Programs Promote a Growth Culture
Mentoring betters the organization as a whole by promoting a culture that’s open to learning and growing at multiple levels. When mentors and mentees are constantly sharing knowledge with one another, it’s contagious! Teams and individuals feel more comfortable reaching out to other departments for help with solving problems, and employees across the board are more likely to seek out and suggest learning opportunities on their own accord.
6. Mentorship Programs Create Greater Awareness of Resources in the Company
Mentorships also create a greater awareness of the available strategic resources within the company. Sharing daily challenges encourages team solutions. For example, if a young mentee has a great relationship with a client outside the organization that you’re trying to get in touch with, they may be able to create lines of communication that may not have been available without the mentorship program.
7. Mentorship Programs Help Mentors and Mentees Give Back
Older mentors often want to share the knowledge that they’ve gained in their area of expertise and at your company. Mentees can often reciprocate help with various projects and applications too. This mutual knowledge sharing connection is one that’s rewarding for both parties and helps everyone do their jobs better as a team.
Mentors are an already occurring resource at your company. Starting a mentorship program allows your organization to become a more unified team where continuous education and growth is something that employees are open to and strive for.
In many ways, our coaches act as leadership mentors for the executives they work with, helping them to advance their leadership skills and capacities. Interested in learning how executive coaching can help motivate your entire organization in a similar way that mentoring can? Download our free eBook Leadership Down the Line: How Executive Coaching Can Help You Inspire Your Executives and Their Leadership Teams!
