Job Tuition

Workplace Mentoring - What are the Benefits?

June 13th, 2007 by Andrew

This is Part 1 in a two-part series on mentoring in the workplace. Watch for Part 2 soon.

Workplace mentoring is an important concept for employers and employees to understand. It’s more than a performance review or task feedback. To understand what it is, why it helps everyone, and how to setup a mentor relationship, we’re writing a two-part series on the subject.

A solid history

Mentoring isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s the way most trades used to be passed down from one generation to the next.

What is an apprenticeship? It’s a mentor relationship. The experienced artisan or tradesman teaches the novice how to succeed in the field.

Interestingly, most apprenticeships went far beyond the trade itself, with the apprentice learning about life and society generally.

Present day example

The benefits of mentoring have been brought into many occupations today. However, one great example is the medical field.

Doctors attend medical school and earn an advanced degree in their field. But before they actually practice on their own, they work under the supervision of another doctor. This is a classic mentor relationship. The experienced doctor teaches the novice about the field and helps the new doctor learn more.

This real-world training, combined with classroom education helps ensure that doctors enter practice on their own with a full skill set.

Great benefits

By now, some of the benefits from mentoring are hopefully clear. But let’s go over more of them:

• Get on the job training
• Foster deeper personal relationships
• Have a person to talk with confidentially
• Get feedback on projects

The cool thing about mentoring is that both parties get great benefits. The mentored employee gets to learn a lot about the profession, and the the mentor also gets to learn and make a new networking connection.

In Part 2, we’ll get down to brass tacks and look at actually setting up a mentor relationship.