I came across a great post recently “How To Build A Professional Mentoring Program” by Nathan Magnuson. This topic is obviously dear to our hearts at Mentoring Complete. We believe that corporate mentoring programs provide a means of cultivating the skills of your company’s most valuable assets (its employees!) throughout the organization. This translates into talent retention (instead of turnover), happier employees and management, and a healthier bottom line.
Nathan’s suggestions for building a professional mentoring program included best practices he has collected after building one of his own. His best practices (and we agree!) build a formal mentoring program include:
- Identify your objective
- Identify your mentee population
- Identify your mentor population
- Set clear expectations
- Choose a system for mentors/mentees to connect
- Obtain executive sponsorship
- Utilize a communications campaign to launch the program
Here is what we would add to Nathan’s list:
- Identify a Mentoring Program Manager (MPM) to successfully create, implement, and oversee the program
- Train all members of the program
- Evaluate and measure the program
All in all, we feel that Nathan did a great job of outlining how to build a professional mentoring program.
If you are interested in learning more about building a professional mentoring program, contact us. If you are looking for more information on the benefits of corporate mentoring you may also be interested in checking out some of our free resources: