Should Organisations Have a Mentoring Scheme for All Employees - Coursework Example

Should organisations have a mentoring scheme for all employees? Introduction Mentoring is considered as a significant tool for training and development of an employee. It helps in the career advancement of an individual. (Hunt & Michael, 1983) Mentoring generally describes a relationship between a less experienced individual, called a protégé and a more experienced individual known as a mentor. Mentor, basically helps the protégé to over come any issues he/she has and help him/her to recognize his/her high performance potential. Traditionally, mentoring had been face to face and long term relationships. Mentoring can be done by a panel of seniors to one junior or by somebody just a step ahead (senior by one post). According to Olian, Carol et al (2004), studies show that the age of the mentor and the work experience of the mentee has no effect on the relationship between the two. Mentoring at the organizational level Mentoring literally means to advise or train someone, but at organizational level, mentoring changes meaning. Mentoring at organization levels does not limit itself only to advising and training but to a complex system of employer and employee relationship involving notions of reflection, openness, uncertainty, complexity and restoration. Mentoring is being studied alone from decades, where mentoring in organization is relatively newer research. Mentoring is a precious tool for managing and bringing a change in any organisation. (Conway, 1995). It is also considered as an economical way of transferring knowledge from a specialist to a learner. (Bjorson & Dingsoryr, 2005) According to a research conducted by Trevor, more women protégés than men felt that their thinking and performance was inspired by mentoring. Functions of a Mentor The mentor’s role is to act as a guide, provide insight, and also advise a mentee in his/her department to reach the highest potential level. Mentors advise on the basis of their professional and personal experiences and guide the mentee on short/long term basis depending on the company’s policy. The mentee’s performance is not usually catered but through guidance, help and advice, the mentor helps the mentee to provide great insights, fast move learning, and also support and improve any drawback of the mentee. On-the-job relationships between employees and employers have been greatly focused in recent years and great emphasis has been laid. There are two types of mentoring; informal or formal in an organization. Informal developmental relationships occur naturally in the workplace between senior managers, lower managers and, subordinates or peers. A combination of assistance is provided through such relationships such as feedback, role modelling, counselling, mentoring, coaching, and skill building. Thus it brings lasting benefits to an organization.( Singh, Bains &Vinnicombe, 2002) However, with the passage of time, informal developmental relationships have declined. This decline is mainly due to changing demographics, introduction of technology, and intense competition. As informal relationships decline, there is a rise in formal mentoring called “formal developmental relationships”. These are distinguished from informal relationships by the fact that they are assigned, maintained, and monitored by the organization, usually through an established program. An employee can interact with senior manager, peer or external consultant in a formal relationship. Although, nowadays, most organization facilitate on creating and implementing programs that would help relationship between senior and junior managers to get better. This helps the communication, trust, and productivity to rise as both sides of managers feel part of one organization. (Douglas, 2003) Formal mentoring is widely being used in the organizations which are rapidly changing and becoming leaner in hierarchy. This type of mentoring helps in the personal and career development of employees. (Tabbron, Macaulay, Cook, 1997). Prof. Dr. Antal Arriene presented four case studies of formal mentoring in Swedish organization in his study named “Odysseus’ legacy to management development: Mentoring”. In his study, he included, an international organization named ABB Sweden developed a mentoring program for all the women in the company. It focuses on developing knowledge and increasing information flow in the organization. The city of Stockholm’s government also implemented such a program. Women with high potential, and nominated by department heads were paired with top managers in city government. A European Insurance Company, named as Trygg Hansa SPP introduced a mentoring program for potential high flyers for a small group of women. Ruter Dam, another company, organized a program to focus on intra-organizational mentoring for women (Antal, 1993) . The author identifies several conclusions or lessons to be learned from the case studies. First, she concludes that mentoring is a valuable addition to management-development efforts. Second, formal mentoring programs potentially benefit both mentors and protégés by providing learning and motivation. Third, active top-management support is a critical component of successful mentoring programs. Fourth, a variety of successful methods exist for identifying, selecting, and matching program participants. The author notes the importance of good chemistry between protégés and their mentors and concludes that a mentoring program should be a part of a larger management-development strategy. (Antal, 1993) . Allen conducted a research on 200 published mentoring articles. He mainly discusses reliance on cross-sectional designs and self-report data, a failure to differentiate between different forms of mentoring, and a lack of experimental research. He used different methods for his research; including literature review, content analysis, and others. The research approach by Allen was coded as qualitative, quantitative-co relational, quantitative- experimental or combined (qualitative and quantitative). Data collection method was coded as survey/questionnaire, focus group, interview, observation, case study, diary, archival, or other. (Allen et al, 2008) According to Allen’s research, there are two distinct types of support protégés receive from their mentors; Career related and psychosocial. (Allen et al, 2008) Ehrich and Brian (1999) also state that the above-mentioned types of support are in fact the function which a performed by a mentor. Career related mentoring is the one in which the mentor is a coach or a sponsor who supports the protégé. Psychosocial mentoring, on the other hand, is the one in which the mentor can be a friend or professional counsellor. Whereas Career mentoring focuses mainly on the protégé’s career and workplace issues only, psychosocial mentoring focuses on personal issues. Career mentoring focuses mainly on the protégé’s career and workplaces matters only. Amongst its many function, the main ones are sponsorship, challenging work assignments, coaching, exposure and visibility and protection. Sponsoring involves nominating the protégés for awards, promotions and appraisals. Challenging work assignments help the protégé develop skills for improvement in his performance. Coaching involves guidance by mentor to accomplish certain tasks in the best possible manner. Exposure and visibility, on the other hand, allows the protégés to interact with senior and gain developmental experiences. Lastly, protection involves protecting the protégé by the mentor from situations that may prove to be harmful at his/her junior level. (Allen et al, 2008) Psychosocial mentoring mainly depends on the chemistry between the mentor and protégé and focuses mainly on the personal aspects of relationship to enhance the protégé’s sense for improvement and appraisal. Counselling, role modelling, friendship and, acceptance and confirmation are amongst the many function of psychosocial mentoring. . (Allen et al, 2008) Mentor acts as a counsellor to the protégé and provides a safe environment in which the protégé can comfortably discuss his/her matters with the mentor. Mentor serves as a role model to the protégé in aspects of life and career. For the protégé, mentor’s experience in life counts as the biggest trait for him to learn from. Friendship involves mutual understand and similar likes and dislikes within and outside workplace. Acceptance and confirmation, finally, brings acceptance, nurturance and support from the mentor’s side for the protégé for self development and improvement. Mentoring is conceptualized as social exchange relationships. (Allen & Eby, 2007). For such relationship to be successful, benefits should equal or exceed costs. This can only happen if mentor and protégé remain in contact and share with each other over the passage of time. Mentoring has numerous benefits of mentoring in the work place. It creates an environment that focuses on every one’s success and is mostly beneficial to all. It also creates a friendly environment where everybody knows their optimum performance level and how they can achieve that. The employees become confident, creative and also productive which is a great benefit to the company. New employees will learn from those at work already and have complete know how of the company. Mentoring would give them a perspective to improve and become like their seniors or mentors. They would work far more dedicatedly, improve skills, show efficiency and raise performance level time to time. Employee mentoring programs are designed with a look to the future. Mentoring programs allow firms to hire people for a specific position with skills that they have and also the prospective hires can develop over time with the assistance of mentoring programs. They focus on creating leaders rather than just good managers. They enhance the skills and also motivate the employee to learn more through trainings, seminars, etc. This mentoring program would also help them to hire top managers from within efficiently as the company is well aware of the employees’ capabilities and his/her potential to improve. Mentoring is often linked to the performance of the mentees but according to a research by Orpen (1997) mentoring can only bring a change in the attitude of the mentees. Their performance might remain unchanged. Benefits for Mentee Employees who had been with the company for long would also benefit from mentoring programs. They won’t have to deal with fresh employees with no experience but with the help of mentors they would have fresh employees who could speed up work efficiently and there will be fewer mistakes on work. With such programs, the higher level could notice and pick those for promotion who are more eager to learn and work. The organization may also benefit from mentoring programs as the people would be high in morale and motivated, and thus increase productivity and lower costs. Mentoring would foster shared values and encourage team work. Also, mentoring programs would lead the organization to become a learning organization. A learning organization is an organization in which employees are continuously expanding their capacity to create results they want and always encourage learning to become better than yesterday. Benefits for Mentor It is recently been acknowledge that the protégé is not the only benefiter but mentor also benefits from such relationship. He/she gains personal satisfaction and gratification by being a mentor. He/she also develops a good social and support network. The mentor, during the process, also learns a lot from the protégé and his/her experiences. The mentor obtains a greater understanding of the barriers experienced at lower levels of the organization. By listening to the protégé, the mentor enhances his/her own skills in coaching, counselling, listening and role-modelling. The mentor also realizes the sense of being needed, recognized professionally, develop and practice a more personal style of leadership. He also learns new perspectives and approaches and contributes something to others in the organization. Although, it should not be ignored here that not all employees look forward to mentoring programs positively. There may be cultural, psychological, social, demographic or other issues for such an attitude. For example, Asians may not prefer mentoring from outside family or friends as they may not trust outside and perceive deception. On the other hand, Americans are far more relaxed when they are mentored by people from outside. They open up more and learn better from outside mentors. Inside people may give them negative competitive feeling and hence leave them de-motivated. According to David Barclay Employee networking organization were established in Hughes Aircraft Company for several minority groups. These minority groups included women, Asian, and disable employee. (Barclay, 1992). This strategy was introduced to promote communication between junior and senior management and also amongst each other. Along with this, a mentoring program was also introduced in which minority workers could seek help and improve. In “The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring”, the author discusses the effectiveness of mentoring on the protégés and relationship between mentoring received and protégés career success. The protégés who received more mentoring, performed better, and were offered more promotions and compensation packages as compared to those with less mentoring. It is a widely known fact that success has a different meaning to every individual and this fact was kept in consideration when the success level of the protégé was measured. Career expectations, job satisfaction, organization power and commitment were amongst the different goals of protégé and their success measured against their goals/aims. Drawbacks of Mentoring Critical evaluation of mentoring in an organization may show drawbacks of mentoring as well. First and foremost disadvantage is over-dependence on the mentor. The protégé may not realize that his/her relationship is formal and may depend on the mentor for guidance in every problem he/she faces. Secondly, in cases where the mentor fails to bring positive outcome, the protégé may feeling of resentment against the mentor and never see one again. Thirdly, the mentor may use micro-management, i.e. control the protégé by commanding him/her directly. The mentor may also face drawbacks. Firstly, protégé’s dependence on the mentor may disturb the routine life of the mentor as he/she has to counsel and guide more than he/she is required to. Secondly, it consumes time, energy, commitment by the mentor to the protégé. One fall back may upset the reputation of the mentor. Conclusion In my view, I believe that organizations should have a mentoring scheme for all employees as it is benefit for all. Also, the benefits mostly equal or exceed the costs. Mainly, the organization becomes a learning organization and its employees become flexible and confident. The organization also benefits in many aspects like: improvement in the communication, productivity of the employees which in the long-run benefits the organization itself. All employees should be treated equally and guided fairly for the organization to develop and foster. References Allen, T. D., Eby, L. T., O’Brien, K. E., & Lentz, E. L. (2008). The state of mentoring research: A qualitative review of current research methods and future research implications. Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 73, 343-357. Allen, T. D., Eby, L. T. (Eds.) (2007). The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring-A Multiple Perspective Approach. Blackwell Publishing Allen, T., & Eby, L. (2007). Naturally occurring mentoring relationship in workplaces. The Blackwell handbook of Mentoring (pp. 139-148). Blackwell: Oxford. Antal, Ariane B. Odysseus’ legacy to management development: Mentoring. European Management Journal 11:4, 1993, pp. 448-454. Barclay, David. (1992) Commitment from the top makes it work. IEEE Spectrum 29:6, pp. 24-27. Bjorson, O. & Dingsoryr, T (2005) A Study of a Mentoring Program for Knowledge Transfer in a Small Software Consultancy Company. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3547, pp.245-256 Conway, Christopher (1995) "Mentoring Managers in Organisations", Equal Opportunities International, Vol. 14 Iss: 3/4, pp.1 - 52 Doughlas, C.A. (2003) Formal Mentoring Programs in Organizations: An Annotated Biblography. CCL Source Books. Retrieved 21 August 2011: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/publications/readers/reader332ccl.pdf Ehrich, Lisa Catherine and Hansford, Brian (1999) Mentoring: Pros and cons for HRM. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources 37(3):92-107. Hunt, D.M & Michael, Carol. (1983) Mentorship: A career Training and Development Tool. The Academy of Management Review. Vol.8 No. 3 Kerry,T & Mayes, A.S (1995) Issues in Mentoring. The Open University. Pp. 137-8 Olian, J.D, Carroll, S.J, Giannantonio, C.M & Feren, D.B (2004). What do Protégés Look for in a Mentor? Result of three experimental Studies. College of Business and Management, University of Maryland, USA Orpen, Christopher (1997) "The effects of formal mentoring on employee work motivation, organizational commitment and job performance", Learning Organization, The, Vol. 4 Iss: 2, pp.53 - 60 Singh, Val. Bains, Divindra & Vinnicombe, Susan.(2002) Informal Mentoring as an Organizational. Resource Long Range Planning Vol. 35, Iss. 4, pp.389-405 Tabbron, A. Macaulay, S. Cook, Sarah (1997) "Making mentoring work", Training for Quality, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, pp.6 - 9 Read More