If You Offer This, be Aware of One Important Caveat

Career development opportunities are of paramount importance when it comes to engaging employees.
 
Which is critical if organizations want to have workplaces where people want to come and work, and stay:
 
✅ According to Gallup, 87% of millennials rated professional or career growth and development opportunities in the workplace as one of their top priorities.
 
✅ And a Bridge survey found that 86% of millennials would be kept from leaving their current position if training and development were offered by their employer.
 
A core component of development programs, besides the obvious access to up-skilling classes and trainings, is mentorship programs.
 
But it is important to establish and structure them correctly.
 
The linked article talks about new research, that finds that mentorship programs can produce very valuable gains:
 
💠 An ROI of a whopping 870%, despite any administrative inefficiency and waste.
 
At least on new hires at a US inbound call center, since this research was limited to that group.
 
𝘽𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙜𝙧𝙖𝙢𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮, 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙩.
 
Although researchers are unsure whether this is because poor performers are insecure and shy about participating.
 
Or, whether it’s the opposite, and it’s because they believe they don’t need help.
 
It goes on to discuss the fact that companies can’t always offer mentoring organization-wide, due to limited resources.
 
However, where possible, participation should be mandatory, since it can be difficult for companies to identify who needs mentoring.
 
But there are some suggestions on deciding:
 
🚩 Analyze how new hires do in the first week or two on the job and aim their efforts at the weakest performers.
 
🚩 Run small-scale mentoring programs as an experiment, analyze participants’ performance and determine who is benefiting, and offer more-intensive mentoring to those individuals.
 
𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 2021 𝙋𝙒𝘾 𝙂𝙡𝙤𝙗𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙀𝙊 𝙎𝙪𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙮, 28% 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙀𝙊𝙨 𝙨𝙖𝙞𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙖𝙧𝙚 “𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙” 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙫𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙠𝙚𝙮 𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙨.
 
Therefore, by providing learning and development opportunities, including mentorship programs, organizations are future proofing themselves in terms of required skillsets.
 
In addition to providing one of the core components of having engaged employees and great cultures.