Overview
Working with many different companies across multiple industries we’ve come across mentorship programs of all sorts and sizes. In this post I wanted to highlight just three interesting ideas we’ve seen along the way. Not all of these ideas will work at every company as programs need to be tailored to the specific culture of each firm, but they’re worth considering.
Idea #1 making positive mentor feedback public
Where we saw it: top 7 Canadian law firm
What they do: like many professional services firms, this law firm took mentorship extremely seriously. They had a well-structured formal mentorship program that paired mentees with senior mentors at the firm. Even better is that this law firm collected feedback from the mentees on their mentors. However, they didn’t stop there at monitoring the effectiveness of the mentorship program. This law firm would then take all the positive feedback and post it on the mentor’s office door for all to see. In their culture it was quite the badge of honour for senior people at the firm to have more positive feedback for their mentorship.
Idea #2 incentivize informal mentorship
Where we saw it: top 3 global strategy consulting firm
What they do: in addition to its many other mentorship initiatives this firm also had a “coffee card”. The rules were simple. So long as two people of different levels in the firm were meeting to discuss mentorship they could use the card available at reception to expense a coffee. Employees were allowed to use the card once a month. The initiative worked great at encouraging employees to meet up to discuss career development.
Idea #3 rotational networking
Where we saw it: S&P 500 Tech company
What they do: while not technically mentorship, networking is a close adjacency which can also have many benefits for an employer. At this particular company HR would on a quarterly basis pair people of different levels who did know each other to meet over coffee. This was a great way to meet others at the firm and expand employees internal network. We heard from employees that they were generally quite excited each quarter to find out who their pairing was and often found the conversations quite interesting.
Summary
These were just three of the many mentorship program ideas we’ve seen. If you’re in HR and tasked with creating a mentorship program or oversee an existing one incorporating innovative and effective mentorship practices doesn’t need to be hard. Together offers an end-to-end AI powered mentorship platform that gives you a best practice program right out of the box. If you want to see how you can easily implement a best practice program subscribe below for a demo or visit our website.
