The backbone of many organisations and a key resource for many leaders and managers are the office professionals. But are your PAs/EAs “forgotten workers” when it comes to tapping into their abilities and providing opportunities for development and progression? What can you do in your organisation to help motivate and develop this vital resource?
In the last two decades, many employers have shown enthusiastic commitment to gender diversity. Women have made enormous strides in being able to compete on the same playing field as men at work. This is where initiatives such as mentoring and sponsor programmes have been really successful in helping erode this gender imbalance and create more gender equity. Gender equity means fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. All the research strongly confirms this as being an important factor in developing more women leaders. So let us consider:
The way mentoring programme design was approached ten years ago needs to be reconsidered in the light of more recent generational differences in the workforce. By 2020 half the working population globally will come from the generation born between 1980 and 2000. As generations evolve, so do the methods for training, developing, coaching and mentoring people. Mentoring someone from the Millennial Generation (sometimes known as Generation Y) is not textbook developmental mentoring as we have experienced it previously. Understanding Millennials’ quite different career and value expectations is key if mentors are going to provide the right type of support to them, as well as the form of mentoring that Millennials relate best to, in order for organisational mentoring programmes to be effective.
