
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