Mentor Program

denisek

Does anyone have a mentor program in place for your current employees? If so, who do you offer it to and what is your purpose behind it? We are just in the beginning phases of discussing if we want to look into this further, so any feedback will be helpful.

HR Hat

This is probably not the type of program you're considering but here's ours.

Our Mentoring program is for new staff. One person from the same department is assigned as a Mentor. The purpose is to help the new staff member make a successful transition into their new position here. The Mentor checks on new staff from time-to-time, and is a "go-to" person with the various questions new staff have. The Mentors are selected by the Dept. Mgr.

The program helps some, but our work culture here is such that new staff are helped as much or more from their "neighbor" than they are their Mentor. Even so, we still have the Mentoring program in place; kind of a safety net.

Went to a seminar once, and this company had 5 mentors for each new staff member! Apparently, it was worth doing, as they consistantly had a very low staff turnover.

denisek

Actually, I should have been more specific. How we would consider using a mentor program would be for employees to have a mentor from a different department. This way current employees could be exposed to other departments, positions and responsibilities if they have an interest in developing in their career into another area of the bank.

HR Hat

I didn't mention this earlier, but should have.

When we started our Mentoring program, we assigned two Mentors; one from the same dept., and one from a different dept. The different dept. didn't work for us, partially because the distance between depts. often seemed to be an obstacle to meeting. For new staff, I think there was also less in common with another dept.

HR Hat