“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.” — Zig Zaglar
When it comes to promoting employee engagement, there are few things as effective as a mentoring programme. An offer of mentoring support demonstrates for employees the fact that the management is interested in their progress within the company. Mentoring is one of the major expectations of millennials. High-flying companies are aware of this.
According to Chronus Corporation, over 71 per cent of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programmes.
Across industries, there is an increasing demand for re-skilling. However, re-skilling is often equated with training in new methodologies alone, and mentoring is seldom factored in. However, according to the Association of Talent Development (ASTD), a combination of training and mentoring yields the best results. Here’s an ASTD finding: “Productivity increased to 88 per cent when mentoring was involved, whereas there was only 24 per cent increase with training alone.”
While chalking out a mentorship programme, a company can now choose from several options. However, one that has consistently proved to be effective is partnering with a human resources consulting firm. Through this method, employees are likely to get a larger picture of the organisation’s priorities and plans.
In July 2016, we came up with V-Connect, a mentoring programme for all our employees, across our businesses. Executed in partnership with Aon Hewitt, V-Connect initially focussed on 1,000 high-performing employees in the organisation, who were identified after a comprehensive study.
These employees began to be mentored by the company’s top leadership. Shortly after the programme kicked off, it was extended to all the 12,000 employees. They were linked to around 800 mentors.
The programme provided managers with the opportunity of becoming mentors. While employees felt cared for as they had been provided with a dedicated senior guide, mentors felt responsible for building the future of the company. A specialised app — Aon Lead — is used for this mentoring programme. The app allows participants to schedule their connections, get latest business updates from around the globe and provides them with access to articles and videos that focus on effective leadership skill-building.
Through the app, employees can participate in quizzes and learning challenges. The app enables recording of conversations and offers an easy feedback mechanism. So far, we have had around 3,000 conversations between mentors and mentees and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. As a result of these interactions, significant behavioural and performance shifts have taken place in the organisation.
Significant gains
The initiative has led to tangible and intangible gains for all stakeholders.
Over the last one year, business performance has improved in different units, in terms of cost reduction, increased production and quality improvement.
Employees have utilised these connects to make a difference in the community by undertaking corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
( Suresh Bose is Head — Group Human Resource at Vedanta Limited. )
