A study by Deloitte says that 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe having a distinctive company culture is pertinent to the organization and business success. Positive company culture matters because it attracts top talent, drives performance, and impacts the satisfaction of employees.
To foster healthy company culture, an organization can develop a mentoring program and spread positivity all around. If you are working on mentoring for diversity and inclusion, you must work on company culture mentoring as well. Here are the benefits of it:
- Improved retention rates
- Better employee engagement
- Opportunities to develop hard and soft skills
- Build better leadership
Getting Started With Mentoring For a Healthy Company Culture
Now the question arises, how to develop a company culture mentoring program? The steps are simple. Here’s how to get started:
Outline the Goals
Like reverse mentoring, this mentoring program also begins by outlining the goals or purpose of the program. Whatever they are, they should eventually align with the business objectives of the organization.
To create a purpose, it’s important to understand the why of the operation. What does your business serve? What is the purpose of your company that makes it different from the rest? After identifying the goals, make sure they align with the business objectives.
Create the Mentoring Process
How will your mentoring program look like? When shaping the program, these are the things you must consider:
- How will the mentees apply for the program?
- Will it be a one-on-one relationship?
- How long will the mentorship last
- How to track the success of the program
This way, you would be able to identify the critical steps of the program to foster a healthy company culture successfully.
Provide Mentorship Training
It’s always helpful to train your mentors so that they can understand what’s expected of them and how to support their mentees. During the training, address the following questions:
- How to develop a company culture
- How will it benefit the mentors and mentees?
- How often will they be mentoring?
- What’s the format of the mentorship?
The goal of the training is to equip the mentors with all the necessary tools for success. Each mentor can then choose an approach based on their experience and of course, the assessment of the mentee. The goal of this training is the same as training a mentor for mentoring for corporate social responsibility.
Measure the Progress
In the end, measure the success of the program. Mentoring software can help here. An organization can use it for extracting reports to track the overall progress of the program. Reports on individual mentees can also be generated to determine how beneficial the program has been.
Like onboarding programs, a mentoring program for company culture must not be bureaucratic. Don’t make it obligatory either. Otherwise, the mentees and mentors will resent it and they will just go through the motions. Make it voluntary and make it inclusive so that all levels of employees are encouraged to participate. Keep it open like Reverse Mentoring.