Mentorship as a Key Strategy for Attracting Top Talent

For any new employee, it’s important to be able to articulate how they are going to feel supported, how they’re going to be developed, and how they’re going to see a path. Ultimately, new employees want to know what development opportunities are being afforded to them. Development and access to relationships is especially critical for newer employees, who often subconsciously decide on the first day of employment how long they plan to stay.

It is especially critical to be intentional about aligning employees with mentoring resources so they can really build effective relationships, learn the ropes and just make sure that they have that connectivity and the safe space to be able to go and ask questions.

An Ideal mentorship program

An ideal mentorship program addresses all of the things that make a great mentoring program work.

Planning is especially critical when you consider what it is you want to accomplish, what resources are going to be needed and how to ensure successful outcomes. This planning process encompasses a lot of things, but it really is important to have a solid plan in place for any mentoring engagement.

Another critical piece of a good mentoring program is training. We often assume that people are either good at mentoring or not good at mentoring, but at Engage Mentoring, we believe everyone can be trained to be effective mentors. It’s especially important for mentors to know what’s being asked of them and also know how to approach the mentoring conversation by asking good questions and being really prepared for the conversations.

Another aspect needing to be addressed in the construction of a good mentoring program is measurement. It is important to understand what it is you’re trying to accomplish and figure out how you’re going to measure the success of that initiative.

Lastly, deciding how the program will be administered, which includes deciding how participants are going to match, how are they going to schedule, and how are you going to ensure that people are having an overall good experience and who’s going to be responsible for that.

Engage Mentoring is an outsourced resource for all of this. We come alongside a client to ensure that this is not a heavy lift. We design and implement a mentoring program that’s impactful and measurable and work to achieve the outcomes that a client is wanting to achieve.

Alison Martin is the Founder and Managing Director of Engage Mentoring, a software-enabled leadership development program that helps companies attract, retain, and develop their talent through strategic mentoring initiatives. For more information, visit www.engagementoring.com.