Employee engagement is all about fostering relationships. Companies operate by the interactions of people. In today’s workforce, encouraging healthy relationships between leadership and staff has become critical to success for employees and businesses in reaching their key objectives.
Like all relationships, growing engagement takes special care and attention. The key to developing lasting relationships lies with mentoring. Mentorship is more pertinent in the digital world than ever before.
1. Mentoring Improves Business Management
Human resource professionals can play a key role in developing mentorship programs. With bona-fide data in hand, they can demonstrate the value of mentoring to leadership. Studies show that manager productivity increases almost 90% among those who have a mentor, as opposed to only 24% of administrators who do not. Productivity improvements at this level are a solid selling point for instituting programs.
2. Mentoring Increases Employee Retention
Mentees feel they work someplace that cares about them as individuals. When a mentor plays a role in developing and promoting careers, employee loyalty remains high. Workers are more likely to remain with a firm when a mentor provides them with an emotional connection.
3. It Creates Trust
In the workplace, employees need to trust that their managers will lead them in the right direction, while managers need to trust that their employees will come to them with issues. A mentoring relationship provides the ideal scenario to foster trust. Mentored employees demonstrate a higher level of engagement and productivity when trust exists.
4. A Mentor Provides Good Counsel
Work-life balance affects everyone, including managers and leadership staff. As experienced team members, they can provide invaluable advice to employees struggling to juggle the personal and professional aspects of their lives. Employees that find their best strategy for work-life balance improve productivity, and mentors can show them the way.
5. Mentorship Provides Assessment and Feedback
There is great value in constant feedback and assessment of one’s work. It provides much needed pointers and uncovers areas for improvement. With good mentors, the feedback process becomes transparent. When the expectation and goals are clear, it is easier to excel in work. The best mentors motivate and are not afraid to push their mentees so that they can
improve consistently.
6. They Help Grows Employee Skill Sets
Mentors provide knowledge backed by experience to their mentees, who in turn can offer fresh insights to mentors. By working together towards mutual advantage, knowledge and resources can expand across work groups resulting in higher overall productivity and engagement. Mentors encourage employees to measure their results, not just time spent in the office.
7. Mentoring Elevates Remote Workers
With the rise of far-flung offices and work-from-home staff, mentoring in a virtual environment can help increase retention of remote workers. Digital communication can enable mentors to work across multiple locations to foster cooperation and engagement. Remote workers often struggle to feel connected to their companies, and mentoring assures them that they are valued.
The role of a manager in worker productivity and staff retention cannot be underestimated.Studies show that about half of employees who leave their jobs cite their managers as the reason. Mentorship helps to push employees in the right direction. It is important for employees to realise how their work makes them who they are, it provides them identity and growth opportunities too.
By improving the relationship between managers and staff through mentor training and support, companies can reduce turnover and increase productivity. When people with common goals need to work together daily, they want a solid relationship that can bring them forward in their careers and the future, together.
About Author
David “Miz” Mizne is Content Marketing Manager at 15Five, performance management company. David is the main contributor and chief editor of the popular 15Five Blog. He is helping to refine and promote this new narrative around employee development via the blog.
David earned a BA in English Literature from The University of Florida and a JD from Nova Southeastern University. When he’s not developing marketing content, he enjoys hiking, reading, working on his novel, and performing impromptu puppet shows.
