How Providing Mentoring Programs Will Help to Retain Employees

It is not enough to simply find and hire great employees in today’s business environment. Let’s face it though, that is not an easy task to begin with. So, once you find qualified individuals, you want to keep them. To do so, you need to provide a working environment where your team feels valued and satisfied with their job. One way to do this is through a mentorship program. Today we are going to look at why and how these mentorships can benefit your company’s employee retention.

The High Costs of Employee Turnovers and Disengagement

Human resource managers will tell you, the cost of hiring an employee is high, but the cost of turnovers and disengaged employees is equally so. The short story is, depending on the position of the employee, the financial cost could be anywhere from 50% - 250% of the annual income and benefits cost for each employee that you have to replace. They also estimate that about 17% of employees are disengaged and not working to their potential which costs you around 34% of their annual earnings. This interactive calculator from LinkedIn Learning will help you to calculate the associated costs for your disengaged employees. Is that something your company could absorb? Probably not. After hearing these numbers, if you were not already actively working to engage and retain your team, I suggest you consider doing so now.

Oh, How Mentorships Have Changed

Long gone are the days where mentorship was just a senior team member taking on a new or junior member to show them the ropes. Mentorship has evolved and now has a more modern approach. The programs of today are designed to be more of a two-way relationship. One that helps both employees involved to grow and provides an increased value to the company. Guidance and support are critical to all employee development, and when you provide a mentoring arrangement, your employees are assured both, leading to more satisfied employees. Your mentees may learn new skills and have a trusted advisor to look up to and ask questions of, while the mentor can expand their leadership skills and understand problems others may face in a different way. Together they provide an insight to you and how you can improve their shared working environment for all team members.

How Does a Mentorship Program Help with Retention?

Here are just a few ways that implementing a mentorship program can benefit your team.

1. The mentee can receive career guidance, motivation, help with goal setting, and growth through the mentor sharing their experiences and knowledge. This shows the mentee, and others on the team, what options are available to them within the company and encourages them to seek new opportunities.
2. Your mentor will feel recognized and valued for what they can offer to others within the team, giving them a sense of pride in their abilities. Through the mentoring relationship they will improve their leadership skills, and perhaps consider advancing within the company to have a larger impact.
3. These relationships will provide you the chance to evaluate all involved for advancement when opportunities present themselves. When promoting from within, you give hope for advancement to the rest of the team as well.
4. Diversity and inclusion can also be improved through the partnerships you create in your mentoring program. As your mentor-mentees build relationships, perhaps with those of differing ethnicities, ages, etc, they will feel more inclusive to others.
5. When people are happy, satisfied, and engaged with their job and the company they work for they will be more inclined to remain rather than look elsewhere.  

Through your mentorship program, and by providing a positive environment you will retain and engage more of your team. Forbes cited a case study on retention rates. The company involved in the study offered a mentorship program and had retention rates of 49% for non-participants, 72% for mentees, and 69% for mentors. Numbers that will improve moral and your bottom line.

In Conclusion

By all accounts, mentorships can have a significant impact on your employees. Those involved, and even those who are not can benefit from the program through the more positive overall work environment they create. The employee retention numbers clearly show that participants are engaged and chose to remain with the company, with many being promoted along the way. If you add the high costs related to recruiting and turnovers, implementing a mentorship program seems to be an opportunity to retain your current employees and improve employee satisfaction.