Beginning a Corporate Mentoring Program

Does your organization already have a mentoring initiative in position and wish to improve it? Or are you currently contemplating starting a mentoring program at your organization - but perhaps concerned about the pitfalls? These 7 practical and critical mentoring program recommendations that'll propel your corporate mentoring program in the best direction:

Do produce a well-defined plan before implementing your program.

Creating a comprehensive, results-oriented program plan will steer you mentoring program in the right direction from ab muscles start. Within the program, it is important to answer key questions such as for instance why mentoring is important for a certain employee audience within your organization, and how this system may help achieve business goals. Do develop the most effective plan possible.

Do define specific and relevant measurements of program success.

To make sure your mentoring program achieves particular goals, make an effort to recognize a set of key success metrics that you can track through the entire life of the program. Metrics should match mentor activities, mentee activities and development, and overarching organizational goals.

Don't just let anyone participate in your program.

Having the best mentoring program means having the most effective mentor-mentee pairs to fulfil program goals. Be sure to target the particular audience which will subscribe to and take advantage of this program at hand. What this means is defining key criteria for ideal mentors and mentees in your program, and putting an activity set up to select a small grouping of desired participants from a bigger applicant pool. Implementing a mentoring software solution can facilitate this process.

Do make sure that program participation is voluntary.

The simplest and most essential way to generate lasting, productive mentoring partnerships is to help keep program participation voluntary. In this manner, mentors are motivated for the proper reasons, and mentees experience the total great things about the program. To keep voluntary participation while still reaching a broad audience of potential mentors and mentees, ensure that you roll-out a well-planned internal marketing campaign for the program - something which mentoring software can quickly facilitate.

Don't skip on training for mentors, mentees and managers.

No real matter what your organization needs or what sort of formal mentoring program you want to implement, ensuring that everyone involved is fully prepared for the program is vital.

Do enforce mentee-driven partnerships in your program.

A typical misperception within many organizations is that mentors should drive meetings and conversations. Mentees which are motivated to drive their own development may benefit a lot more from this system than mentees that rely on the mentors to share with them just how to develop.

Do adapt program management practices as your mentoring program's needs change.

As your mentoring program grows and evolves, monitor this program regularly to see whether you'll need to change or improve certain aspects. As an example - if your program in Victim Service Case Management has grown quickly and there are a lot of participants to manage manually, consider using mentoring software to facilitate this program, automate processes and save time.

Insala is a number one global provider assisting organizations implementing mentoring and career development initiatives.