Living in a global economy and benefiting of technological advancements that facilitate working processes help individuals in shaping their careers and organizations in increasing their performances but a special asset is required for effectively optimizing and valuing these resources. Kaye and Scheff (2000) consider that for properly optimizing the skills and capabilities of their talents, corporations need to ensure their intellectual legacy through mentoring, a process of sharing wisdom through life experience.
United States Office of Personnel Management (UNOPM) (2008) describes mentoring as a formal or informal relationship between people, wherein one is a senior mentor and the other(s) junior protégé(s), having a significant role in the professional development if the mentoring program is properly planned, comprehensive and implemented.
Murell, Forte-Trammell and Bing (2009) identify other values of mentoring, by linking it with the rewarding theory. The authors observe that when employees are motivated to receive rewards and personal recognition, integrating mentoring strategies into the reward program generates a reinforcement and effective endorsement of organizational values (Murell, Forte-Trammell & Bing, 2009).
According to this observation, mentoring enhances the affective connection between employees and the organizations they work for. Through inserting the mentoring programs into the awarding program, employees not only feel motivated to be more productive, but they do so thinking of the organization’s benefit, aligned with their individual rewards and recognition. Therefore, a benefit that mentoring brings for the employees is the increase of job satisfaction, which, as studies reflect, is correlated with career promotions and the participation in a mentoring program (Crawford, 2003).
Mentoring creates a solid relationship between employee and employer, placing it beyond a contractual agreement and into the sphere of commitment and mutual loyalty. Other indirect benefits of mentoring, which make it valuable for employees and organizations alike, is that it creates a sense of familiarity among workers, regardless their seniority level, enhancing a good communication and a positive working atmosphere. Applying IBM model of mentoring and reversed mentoring, employees will tend to learn from one another, sharing the information and skills that they possess, regardless of their seniority level in the company or in the business world (Murrell, Forte-Trammel & Bing, 2009). This creates a friendly atmosphere, wherein employees will feel comfortable to interact with each other, formally and informally. This is a valuable aspect for the employees’ moral, which can be more prosperous in a friendly, yet engaging environment than in one wherein tension and stress are felt, and it is, therefore, in toe organizations’ best interest to stimulate the creation of a friendly and challenging working environment. Hence, job mentoring provides workers not only with consistent knowledge, teaching them how to effectively utilize them to increase their own and their companies’ productivity, but it also transmits them a sense of belonging.
UNOPM (2008) indicates that when they begin their careers, young professionals need mentoring for:
- defining their professional behavior;
- for receiving guidance towards developing their own career plan;
- for developing their own leadership skills;
- for translating the mentees’ education into practice;
- for cultivating the mentees’ social skills;
- for showing the protégées that they are valuable for the company;
A full guidance is assured through mentoring for the new employees, who face the chaotic encounter with the real working environment. In this sense, mentoring is highly valuable because it pushes the employees to aspire further, to impose for themselves higher goals, instead of satisfying with mediocre, static roles, without prospects. In relation with the rewarding program, mentoring creates a mutual recognition between employee and employer in this case, because the employer will be thankful for the attention received in guiding and shaping his/her career and the employer will be grateful for the efforts of the employer to contribute to the company’s performances.
Successful organizations proved that mentoring is not a one-way, vertical communication program, but an interactive, horizontal dialogue. As such, at IBM senior level employers are mentored by their new entries, young level colleagues, through a reversed mentoring program, which reveals that mentoring enhances relationship building, collaboration and innovation, through shared knowledge that trespass the traditional organizational learning boundaries (Murrell, Forte-Trammel & Bing, 2009). Such original and authentic approaches upon mentoring denote the flexibility of this program, which has the potential of transforming organizational behavior and maintaining organizations and employees aligned to the permanent changes that might define their working processes.
The value of job mentoring can also be identified in the outcomes of the program upon the employees’ capabilities. In this respect, Crawford (2003) notes that job mentoring contributes to improving the problem solving skills for social issues. This is a direct benefit of mentoring for employees, which is likely to stimulate their professional development, making mentoring valuable for employees, who can exert the gained or improved capabilities in any other working environment than the one which provided the mentoring program. In other words, as Kaye and Scheef (2000) explain it, mentoring programs are different than the career development programs, because they offer individual attention.
Nevertheless, as stated before, mentoring can also generate loyalty both from the employer (associated with the mentoring part) and the employee (who enjoys the benefits of the protégé), if the program’s objectives include this outcome.
Aiming to identify new benefits of mentoring programs, other than job satisfaction and employee retention, Lesser and Prusak (2004) identify another essential aspect that makes job mentoring valuable: the increase in the organizational knowledge. In fact, in their study, Murrel, Forte-Trammel and Bing (2009) also refer to this positive outcome of the mentoring program, by acknowledging the fact that the organization has to gain from information sharing between employees, stating that knowledge transfer is essential for knowledge oriented organizations. In the current economic world, knowledge is a significant resource, which can make significant difference between the results of two similar competitive companies; hence, the value of job mentoring is also visible through the fact that it confers competitive advantage (Murrell, Forte-Trammel & Bing, 2009). Moreover, Kaye and Scheef (2000) observe that each information, received from various organizational sources (through the mentoring program) is valuable for creating the big picture and determining others to research, exploring the environment surrounding them, for testing the information received, contributing to developing the existent information. This model of knowledge-sharing through mentoring programs is meant to enhance the snowflake theory in the organizational context, enriching the existent information by challenging and testing it for obtaining new knowledge.
Mentoring can take place outside the organizational environment, within communities, while still enhancing the organizations’ image, by boosting its brand equity. Murrell, Forte-Trammel and Bing (2009) present the example of IBM, which developed the “Makocha Minds” mentoring program for the students od 25 universities from Africa, with the purpose of linking the students of these universities’ with IBM technical leaders from United States, developing their intellectual capital. The value of this mentoring program is to develop future leaders, who can later become the next employees within the organization, contributing to further improving its knowledge. Likewise, the mentoring program is aimed at anticipating employee’ recognition and to determine the future employees to commit their expertize to IBM.
Having a direct relationship with their mentors, the mentees tend to copy their behavior and in time, adapt it to their own personalities, becoming themselves, mentors for new employees, because, as Lesser and Prusak (2004) note, being a good mentor means effectively transmitting information so that the protégées to know how to behave.
Reviewing these outcomes of the mentoring program, there can be stated that organizations that apply this program to enhance their performances and to increase their staff retention can obtain valuable additional benefits. However, a well-structured and properly planned mentoring program should be developed, for effectively attaining the proposed goals. Kaye and Scheef (2000) state that the success of a mentoring program (meaning the return on investment and enhanced organizational performances) consists in correctly defining specific goals aimed to be attained through mentoring.
Mentoring is not a stand-alone program, but joined with the career development programs or leadership theories and aligned with organizational goals, is valuable both for employee and for the employer, creating job satisfaction, employee retention, facilitating knowledge sharing, generating mutual loyalty and a friendly yet engaging working environment. All these positive outcomes can be obtained through specific goals setting and can contribute to the organizations’ performance and the employees’ professional development.
References
Crawford, S., Z. (2007) The role of mentoring in enhancing and influencing the job experience for middle-level African American administrators in NCAA Intercollegiate Athletic Departments. Louisville: University of Lousiville.
Kaye B. & Scheef, D. (2000) Mentoring. Alexandria: ASTD.
Lesser, E., L. & Prusak, L. (2004) Creating value with knowledge: insights from IBM Institute for Business Value. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Murrell, A., J. Fort-Trammel, S. & Bing, D. (2009) Intelligent mentoring: how IBM creates value through people, knowledge, and relationships. New Jersey: Pearson plc.
United States Office of Personal Management (2008) Best practices: mentoring. Washington, DC: United States Office of Personal Management.
