Why Investing in Mentorship Initiatives Will Help Your Business in the Long-Run
January 18, 2024Mentoring is a vital part of workplace culture. Finding someone who can guide you through the corporate world can be an invaluable part of your career progression. In turn, helping others who are just starting out can not only be a rewarding experience for you, but can help your company in the long run.
Training new employees and helping them gain skills sets them up to take over greater roles in the future – not to mention cutting expensive turnover costs later on.
“When examining companies and how they became remarkably successful, one trait which stands above many others: successful companies have excellent leaders, and with excellent leaders come excellent employees,” writes Julie Kantor, the CEO of Twomentor, LLC a management consulting firm.
“Leadership and guidance is very important to success in nearly every field, and workplace mentoring is one way to provide personalized leadership for both new and tenured employees.”
“Leadership and guidance is very important to success in nearly every field."
Kantor breaks down the importance of mentoring into four key components. The first is that it is generally just good business sense to educate and encourage learning amongst all your employees. Well-trained employees produce better results than those who don’t receive training. Furthermore, studies have shown that nearly all learning (more than 80 percent) occurs informally – meaning not from studying a textbook or going to class. Effective learning needs to take place on the job from well-versed and experienced workers who are willing to teach.
The second reason to encourage mentoring is that it reduces turnover costs in your business. You won’t have to invest in training fresh employees if you encourage your current employees to grow, adapt and learn. Diversity & Inclusion leader Dresdene Flynn-White estimates that the loss of one good employee can cost your business on average a year’s salary.
Not to mention having employees who are ready to step into managerial roles with minimal training is invaluable.
Having a mentor on hand can also save time and money within the company, as mentor and mentee work together to quickly solve problems as they arise. Assigning a mentor to someone on a specific project also helps that employee gain practical on the job skills and allows the manager to save time and focuses on higher-priority tasks.
“Recognizing and valuing employees who take time to mentor and those who lead the initiatives needs to be on every HR and team leaders priority list,” argues Kantor.
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The evidence backs up Kantor’s claims too. A study conducted by Gartner followed 1,000 Sun employees over a five-year period and found that 25% of employees who took part in the company’s mentoring program received a salary bump, compared to only 5% of the employees who did not take part. 72% of mentees were retained (compared with 49% of employees who were not mentored), and the mentored employees were promoted five times more often than those not in the programme.
Other studies, like one from NCBI, found direct links between those who had mentors and those who later went on to great success in terms of salary, promotions, and job offers.
“Finding a mentor can have an enormous impact at various stages of your career."
We asked Damien Schieber, Head of Culture at Santander UK, about why he thought mentoring was important: “Finding a mentor can have an enormous impact at various stages of your career,” he said.
“Throughout my career, I’ve found that mentors can be very useful for three reasons. Firstly, to have someone that can act as a sounding board to evaluate my ideas and thoughts and to help me gain perspective by providing support and impartial advice.
“Second, is the opportunity for learning from a mentor’s experience, expertise and knowledge for professional development.
“And, finally, to help improve self-confidence and provide the opportunity for self-reflection. The stage that I am now at in my career I’ve now started to become a mentor – this has been very rewarding as I have been able to use my experiences to help develop talent.
“To make a real success of a mentoring relationship it should be built on mutual trust, respect and communication, and involves both parties meeting regularly to exchange ideas, discuss progress and set goals for further development.”
“What makes a good mentor? In the words of my first ever mentor, at some point in your career, you stop getting paid of what you know and start getting paid for the value you bring,” Michael Ollitervo-Murphy of Mercer told us. “A mentor can help you on this journey.”
myGwork can provide you with an important jumping off point to begin your mentoring journey. Whether you’re seeking a mentor or wanting to help someone just starting their career. Click over the members section and tick “show mentors only” and strike up a conversation with someone in your industry.
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