Promoting the value of mentoring to senior management
(posted over 9 years ago)
A workplace mentoring program means you have someone to turn
to for guidance on improving both your approach to your job and your approach
to career development. So, how do you convince the senior leadership team to
introduce such a program?
To start, don’t simply float the idea by your manager in a
passing moment; book a meeting and take the time to sell the benefits of a
mentoring program to the person (or people) who needs to be sold on the idea. Here
are two solid points to present your case.
1) Return on investment.
Before investing in a program, your leadership team will want to know their
expected return on investment. Mentoring doesn’t have a clear ROI but that’s no
different than plenty of other initiatives that are essential to achieving
overall company objectives. While you can’t measure the results of a mentoring
program in actual dollars and cents, you can measure it in increased
productivity, increased employee engagement and lower turnover rates.
And, a lower turnover rate is one of the key points.
Because, if a company of 5,000 employees typically sees a 30 percent turnover
rate every year, they’re spending a lot of money (some estimates suggest it’s $20,000
per employee) on lost productivity, recruitment and onboarding costs. Engaged employees feel a connection to their workplace
and are passionate about their company’s vision and goals. They are therefore
less likely to choose to leave simply because they’re unhappy at work.
On another note, for associations, mentoring relationships
create a concrete and tangible benefit for members, which lead to increased
renewal rates and even a jump in new members.
2) Training
opportunities. Many companies have professional development budgets for
their employees. These budgets typically get spent on workshops, leadership
courses and other training activities. A formal mentoring program is a powerful
resource as it leverages the professional development knowledge from within an
organization – meaning employees are learning from other employees. This boosts leadership development and eases
succession planning.
Once you convince senior managers on the benefits of
introducing a mentoring program, encourage them to become champions of it. When
they’re promoting the benefits of mentoring, everyone will see value in it as
well.
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