Using Senior Staff to Mentor Colleagues [Computer Weekly] Monday 04/18/05 9:09 PM
Several winners and runners up for Best Place to Work Award in the UK use mentoring to improve their organizational performance. An IT Services provider uses a buddy system for their helpdesk where each operator is paired with an IT specialist to help solve customers' issues together. The IT specialist buddy also spends 2 hours each week analyzing the operator's performance and suggesting improvements.
Another company, a software company, has several mentoring initiatives in place. The company keeps a directory of all employees CVs (resumes) and encourages employees to access it for finding desired skills for job shadowing purposes. This company also holds brown bag lunches where employees with a particular expertise shares his/her knowledge informally during lunch with anyone interested in attending. Each employee keeps a Learning Log that identifies desired skills, how the employee will achieve that skill and in what time frame.
Some other tips on coaching:
- Use a matching system for pairing mentors with mentees.
- Mentoring partners with different personalities work best, as long as there is rapport.
- Make sure to have a good feedback mechanism in place for mentor and mentee to communicate through.
- Make sure coaches are trained on the limits of their mentoring relationships.
- Make sure the mentoring program is beneficial to the organization as well as the mentoring pair.
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