The contemporary business world is an amalgamation of new trends. Among these, mentoring programs are gaining massive traction. Did you know that over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs?
If companies are increasingly investing in mentoring programs, they certainly acknowledge the benefits of the same. Mentoring programs offer much more than a mechanism for learning and knowledge sharing. The benefits are much more significant for small businesses than for large corporations. With mentoring programs, small businesses can excel in various business objectives. It would not be incorrect to say that mentoring programs can take small businesses to the next level.
What exactly are the benefits we are talking about? How can small businesses go big by introducing thoughtful mentoring programs? This is what this blog is all about. Let’s find out why your small business needs to create a culture of mentoring.
Advantages of mentoring programs for small businesses
- Promotes a greater sense of belongingness
You would be quite amused to know that a strong sense of workplace belonging can enhance your employees’ job performance by 56 percent. This insight from Deloitte presents a strong case for organisations to encourage belongingness among their employees.
The fact of the matter is that workplace belongingness has a direct correlation with employee engagement, employee retention, and productivity. When employees feel they belong in the workplace, they share their opinions and ideas with greater confidence. Also, belongingness leads to greater inclusion in the workplace. In the ultimate sense, employees respond with exceptional productivity and engagement.
Now, the real question is, what does it take to cultivate a strong sense of belongingness among employees? Well, there can be several approaches to promoting belongingness in the workplace. However, introducing mentoring programs in the workplace can be the most straightforward approach to give your employees a sense of belongingness and inclusion.
This is quite simple to understand. When mentoring programs give equal opportunities to employees to learn, they feel included. They also think they belong to the organisation as it invests in their experience and learning. By promoting belongingness through mentoring, you can increase your employees’ engagement and productivity.
It is well-known that employee engagement is a top priority for modern organisations. It is also true that companies are spending exorbitant amounts of money on employee engagement strategies.
As a small business owner, you may not have that privilege. But mentoring programs can be an inexpensive way to boost engagement by investing in your employees’ experiences. In addition to effective knowledge sharing, mentoring programs can also lead to greater engagement. Did you know that, as per Forbes, highly engaged companies can attain 21 percent higher profitability? What more do you need as a small business?
- Fosters a natural learning environment
Workplace learning is of equal importance to both employers and employees. To explain, as a business leader, you want your employees to meet their learning objectives in a worthwhile way. The more they learn, the better they can contribute to the organisation’s success, right?
Now, if you look at it from the employees’ perspective, the young working generations want their employers to invest in their learning. To explain, millennials and Gen Z look at things differently. They do not want their jobs to be all about remuneration. They want to learn consistently and evolve in terms of professional development.
In fact, it is also true that millennials would not want to stay at a job for long if employers do not offer positive learning experiences. This is where you, as a leader, need to acknowledge an important truth. For millennials and Gen Z employees, occasional classroom training will not satisfy their learning appetite. They aspire to be a part of a natural learning environment that supports continuous learning.
What can be a better alternative than introducing thoughtful mentoring programs that offer great opportunities for professional development? By introducing mentoring arrangements in the workplace, you can promote a conducive learning environment. In such an environment, learning will come from real leaders’ expertise. Knowledge sharing will be far more effective and wholesome. Indeed, it will be a perfect beginning for great new things.
- Assists in reducing employee training cost
As a small business owner, you would agree that training costs consume a large share of operating expenditures.
So, if you are a small business with around 100 employees, employee training costs can be overwhelming. Besides, employee training is an essential cog in the wheel of business advancement. Employee training facilitates upskilling and reskilling objectives of an organisation. After all, you would need a highly skilled workforce to thrive in this competitive business environment. So, we cannot really eliminate employee training expenses.
However, is there a way we can bring down these costs? Well, mentoring programs can make a real difference indeed. To explain, mentoring programs offer hands-on learning experiences to employees. Experienced leaders can share effective knowledge with their mentees in a practical learning environment with mentoring programs.
Having said that, this form of learning will be much more effective than traditional classroom training of employees. This is how mentoring programs can replace a few classroom training modules. So, even if you cannot eliminate training costs, mentoring can be one of the best and most inexpensive employee training methods.
- Cultivates trustworthy relationships
The dynamics of trust will always be quite different in mentor-mentee relationships and superior-subordinate relationships. In the latter, subordinates will feel reluctant to share their feelings with superiors or express their doubts.
On the contrary, in mentor-mentee arrangements, there will be greater ease of communication. Mentor-mentee relationships offer space for trust to grow organically. Let’s say you are a mentor for your employees. If your employees see you making genuine efforts to add value to their learning, they will trust you with all their hearts. However, would the trust be the same if they only see you as a manipulative boss?
This is where you may be wondering if it is worth cultivating trust in the workplace or not. Did you know that employees in high-trust companies manifest 29 percent higher job satisfaction? Besides, Harvard Business Review further states that employees in high trust companies show 50 percent higher work efficiency.
Clearly, trust in the workplace and working relationships can make such a huge difference. It can make a substantial difference in changing the fortunes of your business. This benefit of creating a culture of mentorship in the workplace is a major attraction. With mentoring programs, you can facilitate effective learning and lay a strong foundation of trust. Eventually, where there is trust, the prevalence of ethical issues will be minimum.
- Enables enhanced performance management
Performance management has always been an essential vertical of an organisation’s business objectives. Organisations succeed in a more fruitful way when they manage their employees’ performance effectively. Especially for small businesses, performance management is the key to escalation.
Moreover, performance management dynamics have changed, with millennials and Gen Z employees representing more than 90 percent of the global workforce.
To explain, given the high rate of disengagement and turnover among these young generations, managing performances is much more complex for organisations. Having said that, performance management cannot solely rely on annual or biannual performance reviews in contemporary times.
Effective performance management requires continuous feedback sharing. Employees perform better when they receive regular feedback from their supervisors. This is where mentoring can create an ideal mechanism for constructive feedback sharing.
To explain, in mentoring arrangements, mentors can share real-time feedback with their mentees. In addition to the input, mentors can also suggest ways in which mentees can improve on certain aspects of their work. These discussions will happen consistently, unlike occasional performance reviews. Performances can be managed and improved more effectively.
We also need to consider that incentives and perks are also a part of performance management practices. However, small businesses will always have a constraint regarding monetary incentives. Hence, the most suitable performance management strategy you can rely on is creating continuous feedback-sharing mechanisms through mentoring programs. A perfect blend of immersive learning and regular feedback will help you optimise performance incrementally.
Mentoring programs define a new corporate trend that organisations are embracing. Most enterprises invest in mentoring programs from small businesses to multinational corporations. This is for the host of benefits that mentoring programs offer to companies. Mentoring programs can make a real difference from higher employee satisfaction and engagement to effective learning.
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