Talent, innovation, and determination are essential ingredients to achieving specific goals. Still, appropriate support from other team members is equally important, especially for new employees and preparing to take hold of their responsibilities. A well-structured mentoring program is viable for meeting the learning and development requirements. On the recruitment side, mentorship helps build talent pipelines to engage and support new hires. On the retention side, mentorship supports employee development and career growth.
New hires may feel disengaged and need a structured mentoring session to connect with other teammates. Workplace mentoring programs greatly impact employee engagement and retention, ultimately affecting business productivity and growth. They can make a huge difference in employees’ performance, helping them grow and succeed in their career paths rather than seeking job opportunities elsewhere.
Listen to Mandy Smith, Senior Vice President of Training and Employee Development at SWBC, in conversation with Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President at Infopro Learning, Inc, on the rising need for mentoring in today’s workplace.
Listen to the Podcast to learn more:
Question:
Can you tell us a little about your career and how you got to where you are today?
Question:
How do you prevent people from saying that I am too busy?
Question:
What is the impact of mentorship programs on attrition?
Question:
For people willing to start a mentorship program, what advice would you want to give them?
Expert profile:
Mandy Smith
Mandy Smith is a Senior Vice President of Training and Employee Development at SWBC. She is a Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTM), a designation awarded by the Association for Talent Development (ATD). Mandy’s strategic vision and use of emerging technologies drive employee growth and contribute to SWBC’s success. She has over 20 years of experience in the field of learning and development and has held leadership positions at several organizations. She is a recognized industry speaker and mentor known for her commitment to excellence. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, and hiking in her spare time. She also volunteers with several organizations that support education and social justice.
Nolan Hout
Nolan Hout is the Senior Vice President at Infopro Learning. He has over a decade of experience in the L&D industry, helping global organizations unlock the potential of their workforce. Nolan is results-driven, investing most of his time in finding ways to identify and improve the performance of learning programs through the lens of return on investment. He is passionate about networking with people in the learning and training community. He is also an avid outdoorsman and fly fisherman, spending most of his free time on rivers across the Pacific Northwest.
An excerpt of the discussion follows:
Nolan:
Hello, I am your host, Nolan Hout, and today we will be talking about one of my favorite topics, mentoring with one of the most qualified people I’ve ever met on this subject, Mandy Smith.
Mandy is the Senior Vice President of training and employee development at SWBC. She is responsible for all areas of employee learning and development, including mentoring, where she’s been perfecting the mentoring program for over a decade.
Let’s start the podcast and meet our guest, Mandy.
Welcome to the podcast Mandy.
Mandy:
Thank you for having me.
Nolan:
Can you tell us a little about your career and how you got to where you are today?
Mandy:
It is not my first job, but I’ve been here for a while. I’ve been out here for over 20 years and learned about mentoring via marketing. I was working in our marketing department and found that I spent a great deal of my time working on training materials for one of our divisions that trained our clients. And so over time, when that got to be 90% of my day, it made sense for me to move over into that division.
So, I moved into this division that served credit unions primarily, and we built out training materials and instructor-led classes in an eLearning way. I approached our Chief Administrative Officer at the time and recommended that we have a simple training department that could support the organization’s needs.
And luckily, he bought it along with it, and it’s been almost 15 years now, and we are leading that effort.
Nolan:
One of the models we say is that you transform people to transform your business. Talking about that transformation, mentoring is one of the best ways to do it, and it is the most popular and, in my opinion, is a bit scary. Where does your journey with mentorship start?
Mandy:
Many people have had the good fortune of having influential leaders.
Almost 10 years ago, we started researching if we could create something where we could go to the learner. We wanted to explore using a mentoring program to make that happen. We did a needs analysis to get some feedback from employees on a mentoring program. 87% of people agreed to participate in a mentorship program.
Keeping that in mind, we build a structured program with check-ins for mentors and mentees to discuss the goals. We walked them through the process during kickoff meetings to discuss how to achieve smart goals. We guided the mentors in navigating the conversation with the mentee and guided them on how to meet their goals.
Nolan:
Why do mentorship programs fail, and what are some friction points during a learner’s journey?
Mandy:
We adopt a pairing process and ask mentees what they expect from a mentorship program, what areas they want to grow, and their areas of interest. Accordingly, we pair them with the right mentor. Sometimes we need a mentor with the right skill set or expertise. We reach out to people who can be good mentors because of their experience and communication skills.
Also, we conduct kickoff meetings where former mentors come in and share their valuable insights. Lastly, we close the program by giving certificates of completion to each pair of mentors and mentees. We also have active mentors who return and stay with us for years because they find value in it.
Nolan:
What does a mentorship program itself consist of?
Mandy:
By the time we have paired up the mentor and the mentee, we will start conducting quarterly kickoff meetings to set expectations right from the beginning. For mentors, we provide some instructions on how to get the most out of the program.
Mentees have to establish their goals. Six weeks later, we have a check-in meeting to discuss achievements, challenges, and overall progress. The process continues, and we retain almost 85% of those relationships even after the mentoring program is over.
It was different from the beginning as we had in-person kickoff and check-in meetings. Only a few employees participated in the program early, and we would ask them to join so it did not impact the relationship with their mentor or mentee.
Over the last couple of years, we have also moved our mentorship programs to digital, which has delivered positive outcomes. We could reach out to everyone at diverse locations, which we could not do earlier. We have shifted our instructor-led sessions to webinars, and it brought additional visibility so everyone could be a part of it.
Nolan:
Is there anything you do to track people’s engagement, retention, performance, or any correlations made during the program?
Mandy:
Most L&D professionals are constantly looking for better and more effective ways to measure the program’s impact. We measure the average tenure of someone who participates in one of our programs, such as mentoring, professional development, leadership programs, and others. People work together as a team, establish goals, and invest themselves in accomplishing them.
We also track individual journeys within the program and their career. As per our report, 67% of the participants are promoted within one year of being in the program. Also, our mentors always seek opportunities and build confidence to face new challenges and roles.
Nolan:
Even if we take one step further, every connection we make is linked to attrition. What is the impact of mentorship programs on attrition?
Mandy:
People may look for opportunities in another area and have outgrown where they are today. The awareness and understanding of the possibilities may open the doors for many people.
Nolan:
For people willing to start a mentorship program, what advice would you want to give them?
Mandy:
The very first thing is to get started. You may start small if you need to but start with little things like tactical plans or building out the application of what kind of information you need. Try to analyze what the mentee is looking for, what the mentor has to offer, and their expertise in mentoring. We conduct training to understand initial communication and accordingly make pair of the right mentor and the mentee.
We also do a pilot start where we involve ten people and walk through them to get information. Another good way is to sit down with business leaders and employees to discuss their learning challenges, knowledge gaps they have, what goals they want to achieve, and so on.
We formally share with them what information we have in our catalogs and learning management systems that can be helpful for the mentor and the mentee. You can walk alongside them through the process as they work through the program, so if there are any queries, you can intervene and get everything back on track.
Always ensure that whatever you do yields measurable results for a mentor, mentee, and the organization. You can also seek feedback during the program and make minor adjustments wherever required.
Nolan:
That’s wonderful advice. What about the other end? Is there any dark side of mentorship or anything you want to look out for?
Mandy:
The answer is no! I had some concerns before we did our first program on getting preferential treatment over others. So, we deliberately do not partner with mentors and mentees within the same division or chain of command. We make the mentor and mentee pair from completely different business units.
First, it helps people explore more about the organization, its product lines, and our clients. Second, it also helps us to avoid anyone making assumptions about something that is not there.
We don’t want the mentee to earn a promotion, and someone assume that it’s because of their relationship with their mentor instead of their own merits and performance. But this concern was something at the beginning.
Overall, it helped everyone understand the organization as a whole and get additional exposure, which is one of the objectives and also to avoid any wrong assumptions.
Nolan:
Mentorship programs can greatly impact people’s careers, and for many reasons, they improve their performance. Organizations that want to launch and try mentorship programs will find this information helpful. Thank you, Mandy, for being on the podcast.