Mentoring Program Essay Example

High employee turnover is a problem that many organizations experience. When an organization is constantly losing employees to other firms, chances of it succeeding and growing are very minimal. This is because the recruitment and training of new staff is a costly venture that hugely derails an organization’s progress by adding weight to its expenditures. In addition, building cohesive teams in the organization proves to be hard as employees are constantly leaving. To curb this problem, I am proposing the enactment of a formal mentoring program to both address this issue of employee turnover and at the same time facilitate the building of a pipeline of diverse employees.
The mentoring program will mainly involve long serving organization employees and senior staff who will work closely with the newly acquired staff and give them adequate advice and guidance. The main purpose of mentoring is professional development. Therefore, the senior staff and long serving employees will work with the mentees to facilitate their growth and advancement in an organization.
As mentioned, this program will be formal in nature. Therefore, each newly recruited employee will officially sign up for the mentoring program. The employee will then be assigned to the most appropriate mentor. For example, if an employee is working in the sales department, his mentor will be one of the senior staff members from this department. This mentor program will involve all the employees that the organization will acquire henceforth. For the first few weeks, the new employee will be required to keenly observe the mentor in his daily duties. The mentor will be charged with the duty of ensuring that both professional and personal relationship ensues between him and his mentee. In addition, the mentors expected to be available at all times to answer the mentee’s question and inquiries.
Before the program is rolled out, all the senior staff in the organization will be taken through a mentor training session where they shall be educated on the art of mentoring. By the time the program is rolled out, they will be more than ready for their new duty.
The mentoring program is expected to instill a sense of professional development in the organization. There are many factors that prompt high employee turnover. These range from being overwhelmed by new work environment, lack of proper guidance, perception that the organization does not support professional development amongst others. These are all problems that will addressed by this mentoring program.
The mentoring program is also intended to assist in promoting diversity. However, this might prove to be problematic given that about 80% of the senior leaders and staff in the organization are white males. The talent pipeline in the organization is also dominated by white males. This is obviously a challenge to the promotion of diversity, but it is something that the organization cannot control. The mentoring program will tempt to deal with this problem by promoting an interracial approach. If possible, the mentor and the mentee will belong to different diversities.
The organization has already embarked on a recruitment process that tries to balance issues of diversity, and this will be carried on by the mentoring program. The white senior staff will be assigned to mentees from minority races as a way of promoting diversity. In the long run, this approach will lead to the creation of a pipeline of diverse employees.
Since this program is meant to curb high employee turnover rates and promote employee diversity, it will be measured against these aspects. At the end of the year, the employee turnover rate will be assessed and compared to the previous year before the enactment of the program. The same will happen when measuring diversity. For example, in a department such as the one of marketing, the ethnical composition will be assessed and compared with that of the previous year. The mentees will also be required to fill a review form that assess their views and rating of the program.
If this program is enacted immediately, the company will greatly benefit and will also grow and develop enormously in the near future.