Mentoring

4 November 2020

Retaining employees is vital to a business’s success and going about it can seem tricky. Mentoring is the answer to your staff turnover​ says Ed Johnson​ 

Mentoring is the act of one professional helping another professional. And while that in itself doesn’t sound like such a big deal, it can be one of the simplest ways to ensure that your employees are engaged, productive and happy in their jobs. We gathered together the statistics from dozens of companies and researchers and consistently found a trend between those employees staying and those who are being mentored. Perhaps that’s why 70% of Fortune 500 companies have some form of mentoring programme already?

Mentoring is proven to help retention and there are lots of statistics to back that up. One such statistic from Deloitte, those intending to stay with their organisation for more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor (68%) than not (32%). And Deloitte isn't the only ones who has collated statistics together on mentoring being vital to employee retention. So, we know by these statistics that mentoring does increase staff retention and reduce employee attrition. But, why? Here are a few reasons- 

Mentoring offers the feeling of support
Around 50% of all employees leave their jobs due to management issues. Mentors act as a support for employees who may otherwise feel the only person they can speak with is their manager. While a mentor does not replace a manager (in fact, far from it), they can be a superb additional resource for an employee to turn to. 

Mentoring provides a sense of value
Giving an employee a mentor can help increase their self-worth and value. While we traditionally think about employee benefits as healthcare, dental, pensions and holidays – giving an employee a mentor is actually a great, cost-effective and truly valuable benefit! And your employee will feel that too. By having a mentor, an employee is very likely to feel valued and therefore far less likely to consider handing in their notice. 

Mentoring encourages an openness of communication
Communicating is a good thing. We all know that. Setting up a mentoring programme can encourage employees to communicate more and in doing so dramatically help organisations to break down barriers. If you feel your employees should be communicating more than they are, then mentoring may just be the solution you are looking for. 

Mentoring is learning
When we teach, we learn. Mentoring can help your employees to learn both through being mentored and in mentoring others. When employees feel that they are learning it can dramatically increase their engagement rate. Learning gives everyone an enormous sense of satisfaction, reward and further value and by mentoring you can further encourage learning and development. 

Loosing an employee is extremely costly to a business. With such high employment rates in the UK, organisations are finding it increasingly challenging to retain staff. Mentoring helps with retention but also with improving employee engagemen and development. So why not give it a go.