Mentored employees show increased confidence levels.
By S. E. Slack
for Office.com
May 29, 2000 — Homeric myth tells that when Odysseus set out to fight in the Trojan War, he entrusted his young son Telemachus to a dear friend and advisor, Mentor. Guiding the boy as he grew, Mentor offered sage advice and a wise pair of ears.
Pairing a less-experienced person with a seasoned guide has a long, checkered history in business. Traditionally, someone in upper management sponsored the career of a promising young professional by offering guidance, support and, often, preferential treatment. Growing resentment for what some employees viewed as an elitist process forced many corporations to shelve this practice.
Linda Phillips-Jones, principal consultant for The Mentoring Group, based in Grass Valley, Calif., says changes in the labor market in the past 20 years have forced companies to find and implement creative ways to motivate their work force.
"We started to see mentees approaching mentors and asking for development and mentoring," she says. "They were taking a bold, new step. The mentors weren't necessarily in charge anymore. When we got into the '90s, mentees were becoming so assertive that mentoring totally changed."
Combined with aggressive employees that actively seek out mentors, the tenor of the times is dictating change in the mentoring concept, says Phillips-Jones. "We're moving so fast now, and people need to learn so rapidly," she says. "They can't necessarily wait around for the old-fashioned approach. They get mentors when they need them and move on."
Redefining Mentoring
"I have lots of people who mentor me," says Beth Marcus, president and CEO of GlowDog, a 12-employee company in Bedford, Mass., that sells reflective wear for pets and people. "I go to them when I have an issue or problem that I need help with. I don't have one person that I always go to."
Marcus strongly believes in mentoring and finds unique ways to ensure that her employees have the mentoring they need. "I have a network of people that I draw on all the time, both investors and advisors," she says. "I'm always looking for more people who can help our business plan and business model. I come across them in various ways, through networking or volunteer work. If I meet them and they have something good to offer the company, I bring them in."
Marcus recently had a consultant meet with her employees, for example, to help employees understand the style and design of the GlowDog line and how those have an impact on the image and value of the company. She also sends employees to classes to obtain the development they need.
"Where time and budget permit, I like to send people out to learn things from other people," she says. "The worst thing you can do is try to do everything yourself. It's not the best use of your time. If you don't have someone in the company who is expert in an area, get someone outside who is readily accessible."
Sweet Deal
At Purdy's Chocolates, mentoring had been a fairly informal process for many years. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the company turned to a formal mentoring program in 1993 when it wanted to increase sales. Although the company employs about 600 people in 45 stores, each store has just four to 14 employees, depending on volume at the location. To increase sales while maintaining consistency, the company knew it needed to create a strong sales program.
"We've always felt we learn best from one another anyway," says Judy Ritchie, human resources manager. "Whenever someone new would come into a store, we partnered them up with people who'd been there much longer. They watched the new employees' progress as they learned the trade."
Purdy's further believed that if it formalized mentoring, it could use it to its advantage by melding the concept into its sales-delivery system. Working with the British Columbia-based Mentoring Institute, Purdy's developed an internal mentoring program called "Selling Chocolate the Purdy's Way." By pairing employees with one another, the company hoped its overall philosophies and sales tips would percolate through the organization and enhance its business practices.
Rather than put all 600 employees through the new program all at once, the company used a deliberate and slow approach. The first summer each store manager and the top salesperson in the store completed the mentoring program, with the manager acting as mentor to the salesperson. The two then closely worked together during the next year, using the mentoring techniques they had learned. The next year — and in subsequent years — the mentee became mentor to another salesperson. Eventually, all salespeople in the organization had, at one time or another, been a mentor or mentee. The process not only pushed up Purdy's sales but also heightened employee motivation.
"We were so pleased with the way the sales program worked that we started to include mentoring in almost every program we ran in the company," Ritchie says.
Sharon Nielson, a long-time Purdy's salesperson at the Pacific Centre store in Victoria, British Columbia, shares that sentiment. "Mentoring made me feel more comfortable with what I was doing. It made my job easier and gave me a new perspective on things I thought I already knew." she says.
Getting and Keeping the Best
Other companies say mentoring is one of their greatest recruiting and retainment tools. Rob Caputo, director of internetworking with RealTech Systems in New York City, says workers in the engineering and computer industries are specifically seeking out companies that offer mentoring. He says mentoring is one of the benefits that has helped him lure top candidates to his company, which employs 184 people.
"When we talk to people that we've hired, there are three major things that stand out. Engineers want an environment where they get great pay and benefits as well as challenging work, but development is also high on their list," Caputo says.
At Realtech, employees get mentoring from their first day on the job. Pairing new employees with older ones for the first few months helps the new hires understand how the company works with its customers, how internal matters are handled and where to go for help when needed. Today's style of informal but structured mentoring, Caputo says, helps create a tight-knit group where employees know they can rely on one another as well as management. And that knowledge, he says, generates loyalty.
"I've had employees tell me they've been offered more money somewhere else," Caputo says. "But in the same conversation they tell me they can't get from the other company what they can get here, which is the development they need to further their careers and the support they get from us in any situation. So they stay with us."
Caputo also believes internal mentoring helps his company keep clients as well as employees. "When you have people who are happy working together, customers see it," he says. "It gives them confidence in our company."
Shout it Out
Currently, most large corporations are actively using mentoring as a tool for attracting and retaining employees, says The Mentoring Group's Phillips-Jones. "I know it can seem hard for a smaller business to implement something like mentoring. But if an employee is out looking, mentoring is going to be an attractive benefit. Businesses that don't offer it may lose a good employee."
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"Mentoring does take some effort, mostly in time and commitment," Phillips-Jones says. "But there should be a beginning, a middle and an end. The main point should be goal-setting and showing the mentee ways not only to build skills but to reach their goals."
