With unemployment at current levels, why would any manager focus on mentoring?
With unemployment at current levels, why would any manager focus on mentoring? Why spend money on current employees when they should be happy to have their job?
As an observer of the American business environment, I find myself startled at the short-sightedness of managers who make comments like these. And yet, I have heard these comments and been stunned to see them written in blogs.
Near as I can figure, the questions must derive from the commenter’s own fear of losing their job. They are extremely short-sited and not to the benefit of any company that expects to remain in business for more than a few more quarters.
It is well documented that an outstanding manager (or employee) will contribute significantly more than an average employee in the same position to the firm’s bottom line. Thus, it should be obvious that leveraging your best employees impacts the bottom line in a meaningful way. Today, every manager needs every one of his or her employees to be a better than average employee. Rather than taking employees for granted (“since there are no jobs out there”), managers should be focused on increasing engagement, efficiency and proficiency at the job.
The impact can be meaningful: BestBuy, for example, has recently shared with observers that a 0.1% increase in average employee satisfaction within a store increases revenues, at that store, by $100,000 per year.
Mentoring is the fastest way to share the perspective and tacit knowledge of the outstanding employees. Tacit knowledge is the counterpart to classroom learning. It’s the subtle lessons of experience and observation over time.
When an employee who has been successful in the organization agrees to mentor a less experienced employee and they click – creating a good mentoring experience – the perspective of the successful employee is leveraged and magnified.
Mentor Resources provides software for the administration of formal mentoring programs. WisdomShare™ is a proprietary algorithm which matches Mentors and Mentees to create a good match, where the pair share personality traits. Tell us about your company’s mentoring program. Let us share thoughts on how it might be improved.