A recent article in Forbes said, “Having a mentor is the greatest gift someone can receive”. It is also the most significant treasure someone can offer. Another article says, “those who have mentors out-earn and out-perform those who try going about it on their own.” Dr. Ruth Gotian talks about the emotional and pyscho-social benefit and support a mentoring programme (with or without mentoring software) can offer, which isn’t there as part of a normal working day.
There have been such substantial changes in the way people work over the past year due to Covid. People are balancing home and working life differently, schooling, adapting how they maintain relationships with colleagues, while being remote. Many are adapting to a future of hybrid working and in this new model the emotional support that mentoring provides, alongside the functional role people fulfil in their jobs, has never been so important. Furthermore, the blend of social relationships and technology has become more normalised, with colleagues’ main form of interaction being on Zoom, Teams and more.
Setting up a large mentoring programme
For anyone setting up large mentoring programmes, you know the value mentoring provides. But as with many things in business, you have to be able to demonstrate it, report on it and show the benefits to those higher in the organisation. And so it’s important to consider mentoring software, to help keep a larger mentoring programme running effectively and to report on its value. If you have multiple teams and employees taking part, as well as many different mentors across the globe, you might want to think about having a bit of help from technology and pair up not only mentors and mentees, but mentoring with mentoring software!
How will mentoring software help?
It will help you match mentors and mentees quickly and easily, based on skills and experience, help them communicate and evaluate the scheme through surveys and reports. You can ask, for example, how employees feel in relation to their work, career, and personal life prior to starting mentoring, mid-way through and at the end of a period. These reports and evaluations can highlight the number of engagements taking place between participants, as well as the value the mentoring provides to employee satisfaction, motivation and productivity. This is crucial for a programme’s success and for demonstrating its value.
For anyone running mentoring programmes, you likely have this mentoring programme in the company as a part of your role, not your entire role. Using mentoring software can reduce the administrative burden of pairing mentors and mentees as well as the amount of time needed to run the scheme. Thus making it that much easier to help employees get the mentoring they need. Or if you want to run a scheme, but don’t want someone to have to administer it full time, mentoring software will help you get the scheme up, running and successful — thereby making it easier for you to start one in the first place.
Benefits of an online mentoring system
sfG MentorNet partners with Coach Mentoring Ltd, offering an online mentoring system for your professional mentoring programmes. This secure, user-friendly and affordable online mentoring system simplifies the running of your mentoring programmes, improves communication and enables you to report on and monitor progress in mentoring relationships. Mentors, mentees and administrators can:
- Publish profiles about themselves
- Message each other securely
- Share documents
- Track activity and expenses
- Send out communications and surveys
Hear it from Sarah Loud, Operations Services Manager at EMCC UK, “sfG MentorNet is so efficient. It’s so good. It has reduced the time we spend on running the scheme and enabled us therefore to continue to offer this valuable service to our members — both mentors and mentees, who each say they benefit.”
Find out more about pairing mentoring with mentoring software, mentoring software for businesses, or just get in touch for a chat! We’d love to hear from you.
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