Connect with us
Finance Digest is a leading online platform for finance and business news, providing insights on banking, finance, technology, investing,trading, insurance, fintech, and more. The platform covers a diverse range of topics, including banking, insurance, investment, wealth management, fintech, and regulatory issues. The website publishes news, press releases, opinion and advertorials on various financial organizations, products and services which are commissioned from various Companies, Organizations, PR agencies, Bloggers etc. These commissioned articles are commercial in nature. This is not to be considered as financial advice and should be considered only for information purposes. It does not reflect the views or opinion of our website and is not to be considered an endorsement or a recommendation. We cannot guarantee the accuracy or applicability of any information provided with respect to your individual or personal circumstances. Please seek Professional advice from a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. We link to various third-party websites, affiliate sales networks, and to our advertising partners websites. When you view or click on certain links available on our articles, our partners may compensate us for displaying the content to you or make a purchase or fill a form. This will not incur any additional charges to you. To make things simpler for you to identity or distinguish advertised or sponsored articles or links, you may consider all articles or links hosted on our site as a commercial article placement. We will not be responsible for any loss you may suffer as a result of any omission or inaccuracy on the website.

TECHNOLOGY

by Ed Johnson, Co-Founder of PushFar.

Mentoring is recognised widely as one of the single most effective ways for individuals to progress and develop in their careers. Whether as part of a simple learning and development programme, part of a diversity and inclusion initiative of an improvement scheme, mentoring is continually used by HR and people teams on a global scale. Yet, there are a few problems with the ways in which traditional mentoring programmes and schemes are delivered. Fortunately, technology and the development of platforms dedicated to streamlining the mentoring process, are now revolutionising the way in which mentoring can be offered.

Not so long ago, and still quite often even today, organisations used spreadsheets and emails to match and pair mentors and mentees together. There was often a guessing game of what mentees were looking for and for those more advanced programmes there was perhaps a PDF or word application form. If individuals were lucky and there truly was dedication from HR teams, these would be considered as part of the matching. The truth, however, is that quite often people teams in organisations are seriously stretched for resource as it is, and just pairing 20 mentors and mentees is hard enough, let alone hundreds or thousands of employees. So, what happened? Well, organisations frequently reserved mentoring for ‘top talent’ or those most visibly struggling individuals. Yet, as we know, mentoring is highly beneficial to everyone on every level – whether you’re a recent graduate or a managing director, being a mentor or a mentee comes with a significant number of benefits and ultimately mentoring should be available to everyone.

So, why mentoring?

Mentoring has been attributed to several extremely valuable objectives for organisations. Perhaps the most significant one to reference at the moment is diversity and inclusion. Mentoring can have a genuine impact on inclusion initiatives. It takes the concept of employee resource groups and puts the inclusive action upon them, to share thoughts, ideas, experience, knowledge and challenges, to educate both others within employee resource groups, but also those individuals unaware of challenges inclusion groups may be facing.

If we take the LGBTQ+ networks in an organisation, a senior director may be unlikely to consider international secondment challenges for employees from an equality stance. Yet there are still a significant number of territories globally where it is illegal to be gay. Do we expect CEO’s, company directors or even department heads to be fully aware of this? Perhaps we should, but realistically, we do not. How can we change awareness of challenges minority groups are facing? Mentoring. In fact, PushFar surveyed their mentors and mentees, to find that more than 80% agreed that mentoring was an extremely effective way to tackle challenges around diversity and inclusion.

Ed Johnson

Ed Johnson

Mentoring is also attributed to improved employee engagement, career progression and employee retention. The idea that around half of all employees leave their job owing to management conflict is a big concern. Putting a mentor in place and giving individuals an alternative channel for support, learning and development can play a significant role in reducing employee turnover.

How can technology help mentor matching?

Platforms and technologies like PushFar’s mentoring software are now making this possible, transforming mentoring programmes and closing the gap on those individuals not being offered mentors or mentees. Designed to manage and intelligently offer suggested matches to mentors and mentees, platforms and technologies can then help individuals to stay on track with their mentoring relationships and provide HR leaders and talent teams with valuable and previously opaque insights into mentoring activities. Mentoring can now be on an ‘ongoing’ basis, rather than having a fixed start and end date. This means that as an individual joins an organisation, they can get involved in mentoring instantly and find relevant matches from within their organisation there and then, rather than having to wait potentially 364 days before the next year’s mentoring programme starts!

Furthermore, we know that mentoring is extremely personal. We may face certain challenges at certain times and these often are not aligned with the traditional mentoring ‘start date’. Take, for instance, an organisation who’s mentoring programmes starts in January and runs until December. What happens if you need a mentor to help you navigate through a specific challenge in March or April? You would have to wait until the following January to request a mentor, which is neither helpful nor realistically practical. With technologies and platforms focused on mentoring you can join at the time right for you.

What about technology after the matching process?

Mentoring engagement is notoriously hard to sustain. For the organisations managing mentor matching successfully, individuals will often have a great first meeting. What happens after that? Individuals should schedule their next meeting. Often, they’ll forget and ironically ‘work’ simply gets in the way. These mentoring technologies deliver helpful prompts to mentors and mentees about scheduling their next meeting, setting goals and keeping on top of their objectives. So, not only is the matching and reporting sorted but mentoring engagement is also improved considerably with mentoring software.

So, if you’re looking at mentoring in your organisation, think about technology and how much of an impact it will have on not only resource-saving but also cost effective learning!

Continue Reading

Why pay for news and opinions when you can get them for free?

       Subscribe for free now!


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Recent Posts