Mentoring Culture in the Workplace and How to Develop It

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Developing a mentoring culture within your workplace is the best way to boost and promote your mentoring programme. Your workplace culture will include your business's values and traditions, mentoring has proved to be beneficial for employees in so many ways, it will play a crucial role in your organisation for personal and professional development, and contribute towards a positive culture. From the 2018 Job Seeker Nation Study, roughly half of jobseekers mention that an organisation with an engaging workplace culture is one of the most important things they take into account when looking for and deciding on a new role.

Having a mentoring culture within the workplace is integral to staff retention and development, your staff will feel supported and motivated in their role as well as being given the opportunity to develop their skills and move forward in their career. It is also a perfect tool for onboarding. Having new starters in a mentoring scheme will give them support from day 1, also giving them the opportunity to begin building relationships with their colleagues.

If you are wanting to develop a mentoring culture in your organisation, but are not sure where to start, we would suggest following the below recommendations.

1. Get Senior Leaders and Management on Board

Having the backing of your team leaders and managers to help promote mentoring, (As well as any financial support!) will set the foundation and influence for the rest of your organisation. With their support, you will be able to reach all employees as they spread the word of mentoring to their teams. Inviting different departments, and levels of staff, within your organisation will give a great mix of skills everyone can benefit from.

2. Marketing Mentoring

Marketing your mentoring programme is the most important part of building your mentoring culture and bringing users into your programmes. Webinars, support materials and maintaining regular discussions on mentoring, along with a structure and plan for your mentoring programmes, will get the word out to your colleagues.

3. Embed Into Onboarding

Having mentoring embedded into the onboarding process is not only a great way to support your new staff by providing them with a point of contact and support when joining your organisation. It also gives them a clear schedule of training and learning, alongside building social relationships with current team members, even if working remotely.

4. Tailor Mentoring to Suit Staff Goals

You don’t need to follow the traditional mentoring structure, think outside the box and consider other ways of mentoring, such as reverse mentoring or group mentoring. Find out what staff want in ways of support and development, and start a conversation on how they would like mentoring to help them.

5. Make Mentoring Accessible

Having a Mentoring platform will mean all staff within your organisation have access to mentoring and remove any manual processes for you when running your programs. Through a platform, you can run multiple programs alongside each other, and let the smart matching algorithm suggest matches for your users. You can explore different mentoring structures, such as reverse mentoring, and also include diversity and inclusion mentoring.

6. Praise Any Success

One of the easiest ways to build and form a thriving mentoring culture within your organisation is to actually celebrate any mentoring successes your participants may have. When it comes to building a mentoring culture, one of the two key factors in creating a workplace that values learning and also establishing strong relationships. Praising the success of participants encourages these factors, in result, inspiring your employees to work together and enjoy the mentoring process. There are many ways you can celebrate success such as Mentor/Mentee of the month, hosting competitions on who can complete the most goals and using participants as case studies to demonstrate the power of mentoring.

Final Thoughts

As mentioned, building a mentoring culture will only result in an organisation that values learning and encourages teamwork. Creating an environment in the workplace that celebrates and inspires others to develop, both personal and professional, is a key way to keep employees both satisfied and engaged.

We hope this article was able to showcase some simple ways in which you can successfully create a mentoring culture within your organisation.

If you want to learn more about how mentoring can be used within your workplace, book a free demonstration with PushFar today. We are the world's leading career progression and mentoring platform, helping thousands of individuals and organisations across the globe fulfil their mentoring needs.