Throughout our professional lives, mentors play a vital role in helping us gain workplace confidence. Workplace mentorship is essential for enabling collaboration. The right approach to mentorship teaches employees to lean on each other and act as a team, rather than viewing each other as competition.
Yet, despite 76% of professionals viewing mentorship as important, only around 37% have access to mentorship programs or initiatives at work.
Providing your team with mentors can make all the difference when it comes to the resilience of your business. This makes finding the right mentorship solution crucial, as you need the right level of technical support to facilitate truly effective mentor-mentee relationships.
So — what is the best solution for creating a successful company mentorship program? To find the answer, we must begin by exploring company mentorship platforms and all they have to offer.
What is a company mentorship platform?
A company mentorship platform is a key enabler for collaboration within your business.
Unlike typical collaboration software and platforms, company mentorship platforms focus more specifically on pairing senior employees with their junior or new-hire counterparts.
Mentorship in the workplace can be crucial for not just building a resilient team but also retaining them.
In CNBC’s 2019 Workplace Happiness Survey, it is revealed that 91% of employees with a workplace mentor feel satisfied at their job — with 57% going so far as to say they are “very satisfied.”
However, mentorship requires adequate planning and monitoring to be as effective as possible.
For instance, when senior employees are allowed to pick out their own mentees, this can very easily result in many junior team members being left out of the mentorship initiative. Instead, it is key for business leaders to remain involved in the process to ensure the mentor-mentee relationships being developed are fair, balanced, and accessible to all team members.
A 2022 HR Research Institute study uncovers that 54% of companies leveraging mentorship programs rely on administrators to pair mentors and mentees. A further 86% of respondents report having an internal program manager and 19% use online mentorship administration software.
With a platform designed specifically for company mentorship, your business can foster better workplace relationships and ensure both your mentors and mentees have the support and resources they need.
The benefits of adopting a company mentorship platform
Adopting and implementing a company mentorship platform can be incredibly advantageous for your business, as you are given all the tools and resources you need to succeed.
Three key benefits of a professional mentorship platform include:
- Smart pairings:
- When you use a tech-based mentorship platform, you will likely gain access to a host of automated tools that help you assess your staff and create the ideal mentor-mentee pairings. Finding the right mentor for junior employees is critically important, as this ensures your less experienced team members are paired with senior team members who understand their exact struggles and can provide tailored advice and guidance.
- Greater internal support:
- Company mentorships platforms remove a lot of the administrative burden that comes with establishing a workplace mentorship initiative. Rather than having to handle everything on their own, a platform solution can provide your mentors with the right opportunities to collaborate with each other, share knowledge, and offload the more technical responsibilities onto the platform.
- Deeper connections:
- Ultimately, a company mentorship platform helps you get a mentorship initiative off the ground with greater ease and efficiency. In turn, you can begin developing new internal business relationships between your team members at a faster rate. These mentor-mentee relationships can then evolve into long-lasting connections between your team members that help them feel more valued and involved in the business.
How to find the tight company mentorship platform
Deciding to adopt a company mentorship platform is only the first step — next, you must decide which platform best fits the needs of you and your business team.
As you hunt for the perfect mentorship platform solution, keep an eye out for three key features:
- Automation
- For a company mentorship platform to be as helpful as possible, you need a solution that embraces automation. The idea behind adopting a mentorship platform rather than assigning a mentorship manager or management team is to reduce the burden of administrative tasks. Thus, your first priority should be to find a platform that enables you to automate vital tasks like scheduling meetings and sending reminders.
- Personalized onboarding:
- A great mentorship program starts at onboarding. When you bring new team members on board, it is vital to give them a mentor to turn to that can help teach them the ins and outs of your business and explain company products and services in greater depth. This often goes hand-in-hand with training as well, as having a mentor to turn to for guidance throughout training can be crucially important.
- Centralized knowledge:
- Thirdly, make sure to choose a platform that enables your mentors to communicate with one another and share knowledge. You want your mentors to feel fully enabled to provide the best possible advice and coaching to your less experienced employees — and the best way to do that is to give your mentors the opportunity to collaborate and share their experiences and findings with each other.
Final thoughts: Why PlusPlus is the only mentorship solution you need
The key to success when it comes to mentorship is having a platform you can rely on.
At PlusPlus, our employee enablement platform comes with a variety of mentorship features, including:
- Employee filtering
- Find the best possible mentor-mentee pairings with PlusPlus’s powerful filtering feature. With this tool, you can filter employees according to several factors, such as availability, background, skills, location, and more.
- Simplified scheduling
- PlusPlus takes the hassle out of scheduling. Our platform can be easily integrated with work calendars and other essential meeting tools including Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.
- Automated reminders
- Keep your mentorship program running smoothly with automated reminders that keep everyone’s calendar up to date. Our automated reminders can be integrated with calendar tools, email accounts, and Slack notifications.
- Bi-directional feedback
- To truly assess the success of a mentorship pairing, you need to allow both parties to provide feedback. This enables you to gain a clear view of any pain points in the mentorship program, as well as gain insights via surveys.
- Easy reporting
- PlusPlus makes reporting simple, no matter what business insights you are looking for. Our reporting tools include data on program sign-ups, enrollment, session feedback, and completion of courses or training sessions by specific employees.
See our mentorship features in action
Want to see our platform in action before making any commitments? Book a demo today to discover the many powerful capabilities of the PlusPlus employee enablement platform.
