It is every company's dream to have employees with a high enthusiasm for learning to broaden their knowledge and hone their abilities. This characteristic will be an added value for employees, making it more attractive to the company.
Apart from that, companies must be careful in mapping the characteristics of their employees. In order to continue to develop, every company leader needs to understand the various conditions, needs and aspirations that arise from employees in the company.
A good company will certainly try to facilitate its employees to have the opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills. Efforts to support this are generally carried out by companies through training that their employees can take part in. Apart from holding training, companies can provide mentoring for their employees.
Mentoring is a learning tool for employees who become mentees directly with their mentor. Mentee means a person being guided, while a mentor is a person who provides guidance. A mentor will guide the mentee in honing skills, making decisions, and opening up insights related to companies or career opportunities.
In this way, employees will have a discussion partner or friend when dealing with various conditions or problems in their work environment directly (hands on). This may be more effective if there are some special situations that only occur in your company's industry.
Through mentoring, employees can gain new knowledge from their more senior colleagues. However, senior in this case does not only refer to the context of age, but also greater ability and knowledge than other colleagues.
To be a good mentor, Forbes lists several things that someone needs to master, including:
Carrying out a mentoring program can actually bring various benefits, both for the company itself and for employees. From a financial perspective, of course mentoring will tend to save time and costs.
Apart from that, mentoring can also strengthen interpersonal relationships between employees. Each employee and their mentor will be able to understand each other's difficulties and can directly discuss them to find solutions. This will certainly form a good communication culture within the company.
Are you starting to be interested in holding a mentoring program at your company? If yes, you definitely hope that the program can run well and support company performance. For this reason, here are the steps for 3 Keys to the Success of a Mentoring Program in a Company that you can take:
One of the keys to successful mentoring is how to build a good relationship between mentor and mentee. Thus, company leaders cannot make a mistake in choosing the right pair of mentors for their mentees. The first step you must take is to dig up as much information as possible about your employees.
You can prepare several questions through a questionnaire for all employees to fill out to find out each person's abilities, communication style, and what achievements are expected. After that, you can start looking for a suitable partner to collaborate as a mentor and mentee. In this way, you will reduce the possibility of conflict due to incompatibility between partners during mentoring.
Having a guide is very important. The guide contains rules, procedures and objectives to be achieved from a mentoring program. Through guidance, it is hoped that the continuity of this mentoring will be directed and of course according to the desired targets.
The guidance is of course not designed to limit the steps taken by employees. Rather, the guide will be the basis for this mentoring program to continue running in accordance with company rules. Apart from that, having a guide will make your work as a company leader easier when ensuring the progress and achievements each employee has made.
The positive effects of a mentoring program may not be felt immediately on the first try. You can create this program on an ongoing basis so that the progress shown by both new and old employees is monitored. It is best if the company also continues to evaluate mentoring. Analysis is needed regarding what things will support the effectiveness of mentoring. Sometimes, you can also listen to input from colleagues work directly involved during the process.