There is no denying the extraordinary benefits mentoring provides for both businesses and individuals; from increasing personal confidence and motivation, to establishing a positive work culture, and increasing retention rates within organisations; the positive impacts are endless.
Despite this, only 28% of small and medium sized businesses currently make use of mentors, why is this?
Understanding and Industry Specialisms
The first possibility to why mentoring isn’t more widely utilised can be down to the lack of understanding of what it is and who can benefit from it. Many tend to be under the impression that mentoring is only useful for those in certain industries such as technology or finance, yet this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Mentoring’s versatile nature provides the ability to adapt each programme to suit even the most niche of needs. From general support and guidance to the teaching of specific skills and identifying knowledge gaps, mentoring can equip the mentee with the appropriate resources that enable both personal and career development specific to their industry or role.
Finding a Mentor
A further reason which could be hindering people diving into the world of mentoring is accessibility or finding a suitable mentor or mentee. My own experience of finding it hard to get involved with mentoring allowed me to acknowledge a significant gap in the industry that hindered people from finding their mentor, and ultimately led me to set up PushFar. I wanted to create a platform that could be easily accessible to all, so everyone can reap the benefits mentoring has to offer.
Removing the barriers to finding a mentor or mentee, even on a global scale, and driving awareness of the processes of stepping into mentoring, has been a primary goal of mine for many years.
Time commitments
For busy individuals, or those in senior, complex roles, mentoring may be seen as an additional time commitment, however, there are multiple types of mentoring, allowing individuals to find one that suits them and their working commitments.
Virtual mentoring can take place anywhere, making it an accessible option as well as opening the door to a broader list of mentoring topics. For example, a specialty where those interested are geographically spread out, virtual mentoring overcomes this barrier and makes the pairing of mentor and mentee possible. Group mentoring is another brilliant way for a single mentor to impart knowledge and advice to a group of mentees, reducing the time commitments across multiple mentees.
Types of mentoring
A final hurdle for people getting involved in mentoring is the lack of knowledge around the breadth of mentoring options. Historically thought of as an older, senior member of an organisation mentoring a younger, junior team member, there’s actually reverse mentoring which encourages younger team members to impart their experiences, knowledge and skills. In a similar vein, peer mentoring encourages those of similar age and experience levels take turns in acting as a mentor to each other. This can be hugely helpful for creating supportive and learning systems.
I believe the reason for why mentoring isn’t utilised more widely is due to insufficient understanding of who can use it and how to get involved. Therefore, it should be a priority for organisations across the industries to introduce mentoring as a part of its learning and development programme, helping generate awareness of its benefits for all involved.