NFIB

Increase Employees' Camaraderie and Skills With Mentoring
01/ 12/ 2004

by Tamara E. Holmes

Your employees are among your small business's biggest assets. If you want to make sure that they play a major role in your company's future success, the time to prepare them for greater responsibility is now.

Mentorship, the act of educating someone in a business or trade, is one of the most effective ways to teach key employees about the inner workings of the business.

Not only does mentorship provide new information to employees, but it also makes them feel more valued by the company. Employees who feel valued are more likely to stick around.

"If companies are to grow and develop, often you find everybody has to come along and move to a new level," says Libby Bakken, a manager in Corporate Services for Rochester, N.Y.-based career development firm Career Development Services Inc.

To ensure that that happens, companies should put mentoring systems in place.

"The best mentoring happens informally," says Bakken.

Employees will gravitate toward people they find helpful and can learn from. You can foster a teaching and learning environment in your workplace by publicly recognizing employees who take the time to share skills and information with others.

Another way to develop a mentor-friendly workplace is to give extra points on employee performance reviews to those who teach others, as well as to those who increase their knowledge about different aspects of the company.

Mentoring can work across your whole organization. Any time an employee is taught additional skills by peers or managers, mentoring is taking place.

By setting up a mentoring program, you can match more seasoned employees with less experienced workers with the hopes that they will develop a professional relationship that is beneficial to both of them.

Even the more experienced employee can benefit from being a mentor. Not only does he or she gain experience with training and teaching someone, but mentoring also provides an opportunity for more senior employees to stay aware of the concerns further down the employee chain.

"I would think especially in small businesses where people have to wear a lot of hats that you are looking for people who are comfortable doing that," says Bakken. Small-business owners want to train "people who will continue to learn and grow in different ways and try different things," she says.

You also want to consider your company's main objectives and focus on employees who contribute the most to those areas.

Mentoring can also help your employees get their jobs done faster and more effectively. If different employees are already comfortable with one another, they're likely able to communicate more effectively. For example, two workers who've discussed problems and work issues will likely perform better together if they both happen to be taking part in the same office project.

The only thing mentoring will cost you and your employees is time. But once effective networks have been developed, you and your employees will likely find that it was time well spent.

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Libby Bakken can be contacted at 800.736.6710.

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