Keeping your employees engaged has perhaps been a big challenge for your company in recent years, despite continually bringing in new talent. Training time, though, is maybe very limited due to budget problems and time constraints. This only leaves your new hires more than a little confused on their direction and what their future with your company is.

A mentoring program solves all these problems, especially when getting your employees involved. Many business analysts call mentoring an overlooked perk because of the benefits it gives new hires.

According to statistics, 77% of all companies that use mentoring programs are able to improve employee retention and job performance.

Take a look at the various aspects mentoring brings beyond just retention.

Helping With Career Development
All great companies need a clear vision to help employees understand their roles. Even if everyone may know this in your company, new talent may not without understanding your philosophies.

Mentoring helps with career development on this front. To make it effective, though, you need an effective mentoring system in place. Some things to consider first to make it work and not fall apart:

Decide who\’s going to do the mentoring. Can you find the right employees who can teach the new employee the ropes? Considering career development is more complex than learning about leadership, you may want someone with seniority to mentor in this category.
Find different ways the mentor can teach career development, like helping with networking, setting goals, and understanding how to overcome challenges.
Teach the new hire what sets you apart from competitors. This understanding of your mission and brand is the most important aspect to whether someone new is going to stay long-term.
While this is a good start in your mentoring program, you have a lot more to teach them. Next, you\’ll want to get into the leadership aspect to help build a potential future list of successors.

Teaching Leadership Development
You obviously want to help new hires stick around for a long time so they can become future managers and executives to keep your company going. Leadership development is an important aspect to this.

Mentoring sets a specific mindset for the new employee toward what your long-term vision is. By identifying all your common objectives and expectations, they\’ll begin to understand what it means to be a leader in your company.

The mentor should also dig into the challenging realities of being a leader. Some of this involves learning about confidentiality and nurturing the right relationships with colleagues or clients.

Learning how to deal with people and tracking specific goals are the two main skills that develop true leadership skills.

Using Onboarding Training
When someone new starts in your company, you need to help them become acclimated to the surroundings. Nurturing a strong brand might become overwhelming to a new person to a point where they may feel like they can\’t live up to standards.

Any kind of new organizational structure can become what\’s commonly called \”baggage\” to new employees. It may feel so intense for them, it could affect their immediate job performance.

This is why mentoring is so important so new hires understand how your company operates for their first few days. You should choose mentors who\’ve been in their shoes once and know what it\’s like to feel petrified at how to fit in.

Many new employees may also come in with certain expectations that are probably beyond their scope. The mentor should show newbies the realities so they don\’t try to achieve something they can\’t realistically take on.

Mentoring on Knowledge Transfer
As another aspect to creating long-term employees, mentoring as a process of knowledge transfer is imperative to understand your company culture.

You\’ve no doubt become successful based on a lot of trial and error, including acquiring valuable business secrets along the way. Some of these aspects are perhaps trade secrets you don\’t want anyone else knowing.

However, with new hires coming in and you wanting to nurture future company successors, mentoring these people on your knowledge can become very valuable.

First, though, you\’ll want to teach them hard skills they can use now to help them build up to handling more complex responsibilities. Preparing someone new for an executive position now can give them a guiding light to work toward this plateau.

Some other steps to use in knowledge transfer:

•If you don\’t have time to do mentoring yourself, find someone in your company with seniority and who\’s planning to retire soon. The ones who\’ve been around a while (perhaps longer than you) can provide valuable advice.

•Mentor based on how everyone is going to communicate with the new hire. In a more digital world, the new employee is perhaps a Millennial used to communicating by video conferencing or text. Mentoring them through digital means can get them used to working with these communication methods.

•Have your mentor organize exactly what they\’ll impart to the new worker. Rather than just winging it and overwhelming the new person with information, giving them immediate and organized information they can use now is more important.

Mentoring for Personal Interest
No matter who you choose to become a mentor, they need to act like a teacher and display a genuine personal interest in helping. They have to feel invested in the mentee being successful, something that reflects well on your brand.

When the mentor has years of working hard for your brand, they\’re going to feel more invested in making sure a new generation upholds the same mindset. For the future of your company, it\’s truly essential to ensure your brand carries forward into the coming decades.

As mentioned above, proper communication is everything in how you do the mentoring. You\’ll want reliable technology to help this along and get all new hires on the same page.

Using an SaaS Tool for Communicating
Here at HeyBuddy, we\’ve created an SaaS platform that allows you to easily communicate with everyone in your company. We make it easy to share content, reports, presentations, HR information, and client information as just starters.

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