One of the most important things you can do as an organizational leader is develop your company’s future leaders. And one of the best ways to do that is to design and implement a peer mentoring program. Here’s a look at why internal mentoring programs matter and the steps you can take to create one.

Why Should You Have a Mentorship Program?

If you’ve never put together a mentorship program before, it’s a lot of work — but it’s worth it. The right mentorship program can have far-reaching positive effects on your business, including:

• Strengthening communication between leadership levels
• Transferring valuable institutional knowledge
• Developing future leaders for specific roles
• Fostering a collaborative atmosphere
• Boosting employee retention

Of course, keep in mind that these are the benefits of a carefully designed mentorship program. A chaotic and poorly designed program might have the opposite effect.

Building a Peer Mentoring Program: Keys to Success

How exactly do you go about creating a program that benefits your company? Your exact strategies may depend on your industry, workforce, and specific needs, but here are some ideas to get you started.

Decide Who’s in Charge

This might sound obvious, but when you’re creating a new program, it’s easy to lose sight of basic things. Before starting, you should choose one or two people (or a committee) to oversee the mentorship program. Make sure the people you choose have the expertise to do the following:

• Connect mentors with mentees
• Make sure mentees are gleaning valuable information
• Make sure all mentor/mentee relationships are healthy and benefit the company
• Resolve issues and mediate interpersonal problems if needed

Making sure the person or people in charge have the right skill set is critical. Often, it’s a good idea to have at least one person from your HR department.

Choose Your Mentors Carefully

The goal of the mentorship program is to develop employees who will one day be major assets to the company. That means you don’t want to let every interested party be a mentor. To keep things fair and make sure mentees get the information they need, you should have clear criteria set for mentors. These are some criteria you might include:

• Sufficient time in your company
• Valuable knowledge or skills to impart
• A desire to be part of the mentorship program
• The ability to discuss things with the mentee (not just lecture)
• A desire to benefit the company as a whole

Of course, you should also select mentees carefully. You don’t want to waste a senior executive’s effort and wisdom on someone who is clearly disinterested.

Put Careful Thought Into Matches

Remember that the point of the program is professional growth. When creating mentor/mentee pairs, resist the urge to put two people together because they have similar personalities. Instead, focus on skills — if a mentor possesses a skill a mentee needs to learn, that’s all you need for a successful pairing.

Be Clear About the Purpose

In most cases, when a company has a mentorship program, the goal isn’t to fast-track certain employees to leadership positions. While employees who participate in these kinds of programs often do get promoted, the primary focus is to develop employees in both their individual careers and in ways that can help the company.

If an employee participates in the mentorship program believing it’s a sure ticket to promotion, they may be resentful when they find out they were mistaken. Always be clear about what employees can and cannot expect from the start. If your mentorship program is a fast track to a promotion, you should let your employees know that, too.

Let Us Help You Build Leadership the Right Way

At AssetHR, we partner with Relevant Movement to build up companies so they can maximize the present and grow toward a stronger future. Peer mentoring and leadership development are a great way to achieve both, but for many companies and leaders, creating a mentorship program from scratch is harder than it looks. 

When you work with us, we can custom-tailor mentorship and training programs to meet your employees’ needs and reach your company goals. Contact us today to get started!