Mentoring: Who holds the knowledge within your organization?

In every company there is a person or two that employees are drawn to when they have a knowledge or skill gap. They are the people who pass on the motivations behind previous decisions or share the value of certain best practices within an organization. They play the role of mentors, historians, or change agents and their insights are sought from cubicle to cubicle, mentioned at the water-cooler, and scratched on post-it-notes beside computers. But their importance is often overlooked and underestimated by an organization’s leadership.

 

Know your Talent

Do you know who these people are in your organization? Is it the sales professional who has been with the organization for years, but never felt the desire to move into a leadership role? Is it a key leadership role that understands the value of development, but struggles with limited time? Is it the newest member of the team who brings new methods and techniques from their previous organization, but it is unsure of how to share their information appropriately? Taking the time to identify these critical employee’s in your organization is a positive first step.

 

Identify Topics

A second step is identifying critical topic and skill areas that mentors are asked to speak on most often. By 2020 over fifty percent of the global workforce will be made up of millenials, and more than half of the baby boomer workforce will either leave or change their working status. As the workforce population continues to shift, it is imperative that organizations create a strategy for managing the loss of both formal and informal knowledge in their organization. Formal knowledge is the content and processes that are documented and often already included in some form of training materials. Mentors may have insights into practical details of how to implement and use that formal knowledge. Informal knowledge is the information that is not documented, but critical to the culture and performance of an organization. This information is often called the “grey” matter, and may be the difference between meeting goals and exceeding goals for many organizations.

 

Create Scalable Sharing Models

Sharing critical information mentor to mentee on a one-to-one basis is not only inefficient, but in the face of the massive workforce changes facing organizations today it is also often inadequate. Industries such as healthcare and manufacturing, as well as government agencies, are finding that their workforces are turning over faster than they can capture and transfer knowledge. This challenge leads many organizations to begin looking for both an infrastructure in which to capture and categorize their knowledge, as well as processes to ensure the knowledge is captured.

 

Keep the end-users in mind

The infrastructure and support for mentors to share their information and guidance must be both user friendly and scalable for an organization’s growth plans. If the infrastructure is cumbersome, or the processes are too difficult, both mentors and mentees will simply revert back to the inefficient and non-scalable method of sharing information across cubicles and water coolers. Technology can obviously provide both structure and tools to capture mentoring knowledge, but it will not replace the process work that needs to be put in place as well to capture that knowledge and use it effectively.

 

Summary

Viewing mentoring as a key element of your learning strategy and creating a model that fits both the needs and maturity of your business has been shown to provide valuable business benefits. Brandon Hall Group’s research shows that those organizations that improve their approach to mentoring, shifting it to a scalable and defined model have seen improvements in engagement scores, retention rates, and reduced learning gaps. More importantly, these organizations often find improved customer satisfaction scores and sales metrics follow as well.

Take the time to understand:

• Who already holds informal and formal mentoring roles in your organization?
• What topics are they discussing most often?
• What is the best way to scale your mentoring tools and processes?
• What do both the mentors and mentee’s require from the system to ensure it meets their needs?

Organizations often say they value mentoring and coaching, but fail to provide adequate time or support for either of these efforts. As you begin the New Year, and look to the future for your organization’s growth and opportunities, remember the value of those employees who keep your organization performing.

 

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About Stacey Harris

Stacey Harris oversees Brandon Hall Group’s research strategy and agenda, solution provider relations, and advisory services. Her background includes experience leading enterprise-wide change management initiatives and technology implementations, business process alignments, and the design and implementation of integrated organizational effectiveness solutions including measurement strategies.

 

About The Brandon Hall Group

With more than 10,000 clients globally and 20 years of delivering world class solutions, Brandon Hall Group is the preeminent research and analyst organization focused on developing research driven solutions to drive organizational performance for emerging and large organizations. Through the recent merger of Brandon Hall Research and AC Growth, Brandon Hall Group has an extensive repository of thought leadership, research, data and expertise in Talent Management, Learning & Development, Sales, Marketing and Executive Management.

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