Operations: The Benefits of an Employee Mentorship Program

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Onboarding new employees can be time consuming. There are policies and procedures to learn, core values to teach and a culture to assimilate. Not to mention teaching all of the duties and tasks a new employee is responsible for overseeing.

And employee onboarding is an extremely important part of your business. Good onboarding leads to the empowerment of new employees to succeed. Bad onboarding leaves them floundering, asking tons of questions, and at a loss for how to best excel in their new role.

This is where creating an employee mentorship program can help. Doing so makes the onboarding process more efficient and effective.

To start, lean on your human resource department, if you have one. If you don’t, partner with an experienced member of your team that does a lot of training. Together, decide what the biggest issues are when it comes to employee onboarding. Ask if a mentorship program could solve these issues.

Next, create a structure for the program. Develop guidelines and steps each new employee has to follow. Decide which positions require mentorship, and which employee will provide that guidance. You should also decide how long they need to shadow — is one day enough, is a full week required, or more?

During this time you may also require they read the company manual, review core values, policies procedures, etc. You can even incorporate quizzes into the program, to ensure they retained the info reviewed. This is especially important for roles that involve risk management — new managers need to know what to do in case of a fire, cardiac event and more.

Some companies even do mentorships in groups. If there are certain seasons during which you hire multiple new employees at once (such as around the New Year’s rush), develop your mentorship program around those seasons. That way, mentors don’t have to repeat info that’s applicable to five different front desk employees.

Employee mentorship programs should accomplish the following:

• Onboard new employees in the most efficient way possible.
• Limit the amount of questions new employees have.
• Educate employees on their new role.
• Empower new employees to succeed.
• Teach new employees the company’s core values, and how to emulate them.

To accomplish these things, ensure your mentors have buy-in. If you have a mentor who doesn’t understand the importance of being a mentor, they won’t be as effective.