Mentorship For All
Chantal Brine is the founder and CEO of EnPoint, which helps clients create and maintain mentorship programs using an automated platform.
As post-pandemic life continues, the state of employment remains as unpredictable as ever. In 2021-2022, there were many stories about “the great resignation” across North America. These stories painted a picture of masses of employees feeling compelled to leave their roles and seek out new opportunities that better align with their values and expectations.
In Canada, this manifested itself as more of a “great reflection”.
While employees were resigning to pursue other opportunities in the United States, it was not on a mass scale in Canada. In fact, job rates remained relatively consistent, or within normal fluctuations, post-pandemic when compared with pre-pandemic.
“It’s not so much a ‘Great Resignation’ but a ‘Great Rethink’ or a ‘Great Reconsideration’ of the type of work that people want to do,” according to David Coletto, the CEO of Abacus Data.
The outcome of more employees embracing “the great reflection” has forced employers to re-evaluate their value propositions and employee benefits and re-examine how to deliver meaningful employee experiences that attract and retain top talent.
In late 2022, there was yet another shift in the workforce as some of the world’s largest companies – Amazon, Meta, Snapchat, Netflix, and Twitter – announced massive layoffs and hiring freezes to adjust to the impact of inflation. In the tech industry alone, there will have been an estimated 120,000 or more layoffs in 2022. This ushered in stories of “the great regret” where employees who joined the great resignation/reconsideration found higher-than-anticipated difficulty acquiring a new role and perhaps realized that the grass may not always be greener on the other side.
Yet through all these changes, the value of mentorship to organizations and communities has not changed. Perhaps it’s become more than ever a critical tool in an employer’s arsenal to effectively compete for talent in the future of work. Similarly for talent, mentorship serves as an effective learning tool. In fact, “continuous learning and curiosity” is cited as a top-10 skill according to Future Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World and many more thought leaders on the future of work. Due to its versatility, mentorship can be a meaningful and cost-effective solution to help talent and employers adapt as the world of work continues to evolve.
Mentorship Across Generations
The labour market currently consists of five generations: veterans or traditionalists ranging from 76 to 99 years old, baby boomers ranging from ages 57 to 75, Gen Xers ranging from ages 41 to 56, millennials ranging from 26 to 40, and Gen Zs 25 and younger. This diverse range of ages in the workforce also means a diversity of expectations for employers. When working with a multi-generational workforce and the continuous rapid evolution of technology, there are a variety of learning styles and methods that employers need to accommodate.
Additionally, with one in five working adults nearing retirement, the exodus of employees from older generations means a huge loss of knowledge transfer and organizational history. Organizations will need to focus on retention of people and their knowledge while simultaneously figuring out how to meet the unique needs, values, and expectations of a multigenerational workforce.
Mentorship can be a valuable solution that supports the preservation of knowledge, promotes learning across diverse learning styles, and builds employee connections to the organization and to fellow employees.
Older generations, or perhaps those with a very niche area of expertise, can benefit from “reverse mentorship.” This form of mentorship can help them adapt to new technologies, leverage new data, and gain valuable insight on workplace trends and expectations from younger generations.
Mentorship can help expand diversity of thinking from multiple perspectives across the workplace. It also offers an added benefit for those who are expected to manage different generations. For example, for executives — a level in the Canadian job market that still lacks diversity — there is a positive impact on their ability and confidence to manage multi-generational teams when more context and rapport is established across these generations. As it is often said, most people don’t leave jobs, they leave bad managers. It is in the best interest of companies to develop good managers that are collaborative with and respected by all generations.
Reverse mentoring also offers younger staff the opportunity to feel heard and welcomed. That, combined with other HR initiatives, can help reduce employee turnover. Both millennials and gen Z employees generally have expectations regarding working in an organization where they can do meaningful work and see their potential for growth. For employees to do meaningful work, employers and managers must create the conditions for growth and understand that mentorship is simply an expectation for these two generations.
Simultaneously, employees early in their career can benefit from mentorship of a seasoned professional. Often perceived as more ‘traditional mentorship,’ this kind of relationship allows them to onboard to new roles more quickly, deepen their communication and self-awareness skills, build confidence, and gain the benefits that come with learning from someone who already has experience in their field of interest. This form of mentorship is often found within organizations and pre-employment in programs where post-secondary institutions pair students with former graduates or community members in a field to better prepare them for life after graduation.
All generations can benefit from “learning” and “unlearning” skill sets in order to effectively compete for career opportunities as the future of work evolves. Employees must learn and adapt quickly to working with multi-generational, multi-disciplinary, and diverse teams for the future. Mentorship is a catalyst to bring people together, share stories and experiences, learn together, and create pathways for change – at all career stages and ages.
Mentorship For Career Pivots
During the “great resignation”, while some employees resigned and sought lateral roles in new organizations that aligned with their values, others opted to make drastic changes in their career instead. This time provided workers with the opportunity to consider their passions, how this may align with their career, and what type of employer they would like to work with. For many, the great resignation/ great reflection provided the perfect timing for a career pivot.
In contrast, employers found themselves facing hiring challenges, including low application numbers and widening skill gaps. This time called for a shift in perceptions in corporate culture around employee education, skill expectations, and hiring practices.
This period provided no better time to place reskilling and upskilling paired with mentorship at the forefront of priorities for both employees and employers. For employers, mentorship can be a fantastic solution for employee attraction, retention, job satisfaction, and development in the context of reskilling and upskilling.
According to a Pew Research Center Survey, nearly 7 in 10 workers are willing to retrain and learn new skills on the job. Having a formalized mentorship program can be the vehicle to help existing employees stay within the company while making their desired pivot across departments. Through mentoring, organizations can benefit from connecting an employee with a skills gap to an employee who excels in that skill.
Through this relationship, the company presumably retains the newly skilled talent, allowing them to “test drive” the employee in a new role/ area without having to incur any additional costs of replacing them or hiring a new worker. It also allows employees to ‘try a new role on’ and see if it fits; regardless of the outcome, however, employees feel supported in their career progression and valued by employers.
According to Monster’s Future of Work Report, which surveyed 3,000 recruiters and talent acquisition leaders around the globe from Aug. 23 to Sept. 10, 2021, nearly 70 percent of employers are willing to hire and train someone with transferable skills.
Workers who are looking to make career pivots can seek out mentors or workplaces with mentorship programs as they take the plunge into a new career to help them gain insight on their desired roles, understand their skill gaps and also provide them networking opportunities that support retention in that new field/role.
It’s also important to not lose sight of mentorship’s role in bolstering self-confidence as employees or job seekers take on new roles through re-skilling or upskilling. By instilling confidence through mentorship, employers can ignite the potential and enable the passions of their employees to do more meaningful work. The overall confidence and connectedness to their work will inevitably lead to higher and longer-term job satisfaction.
Mentorship For Community Building
Research shows that employment and training barriers faced by marginalized groups were increasingly exacerbated during and following the pandemic. For example, not long after the pandemic began, it became clear that it would disproportionately impact women, girls, and gender-diverse people.
Studies reported women’s unemployment increased by 2.9% more than men’s. According to a McKinsey study, women represent most employees in industries that experienced the greatest declines because of the pandemic, such as hospitality and food service, retail, education, and manufacturing.
According to canadianwomen.org, immigrant women were among the hardest hit at the beginning of the pandemic, due to their high density in service and accommodation industry work, and their low wages within precarious jobs. Coupled with increasing demands of their domestic responsibilities, women were likely to feel increasing mental and physical pressure.
Racialized communities were also among those severely impacted by the pandemic. Confined living situations, employment in high-risk and low-paying jobs, disparities in health and social services, as well as increasing racism were all cited as issues faced by East Asian, Indigenous, and Black communities.
Now, more than ever, there is a need to build a more inclusive Canadian economy that represents the diversity of our country. Accomplishing this involves the collaboration of governments, community partners, employers, and job-seekers/employees to ensure there is access for everyone to be able to engage in meaningful career development opportunities and remove barriers to these economic opportunities for all.
Research shows that diverse companies are more likely to outperform less diverse peers on profitability, by as much as 25 percent, and additionally are 3-to-4 times more productive. This is attributed to diverse companies’ unique insights, improvements in problem-solving, and enhancement of full and authentic employee engagement.
Mentorship can be used as a tool throughout an organization’s hiring, engagement, and retention efforts. Rather than depending solely on traditional hiring methods like career fairs and job postings to recruit diverse applicant pools, organizations can offer mentorship opportunities that connect them with prospective employees from diverse communities. This initiative can create more diverse hiring pipelines, identify gaps within non-traditional or historically underrepresented talent pools, and build real relationships with diverse communities. By investing in these relationships, employers can demonstrate their commitment to DEI, building trust and credibility within diverse communities.
Once in the workplace, minority employees often seek out those of similar backgrounds to them for support, positive reinforcement, and/or camaraderie. However, with gender and cultural disparity in leadership and in the workforce, it is not always easy to find mentors with those similarities.
Organizations need to enable efforts for career development, progression, and success for all by supporting employees’ unique needs and passions. Mentorship, when paired with sponsorship, can be a powerful tool to elevate women and minorities within the workforce. It’s been researched that paired with initiatives dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion at work, mentorship can help boost representation at leadership levels by between 9 and 24 percent.
For newcomers or immigrants, mentorship in the community can help support the navigation of an unfamiliar environment and help facilitate connections within industry. For others, mentorship can inspire career aspirations, foster community and industry connections, provide insight into career options, and open doors to opportunities that may not have been accessible historically. With collaboration from all, mentorship can be a great vehicle to strengthen and build an inclusive and diverse community and workforce.
Mentorship for Employee Experience
The pandemic saw many companies make a rapid shift to working from home, with some retaining the remote-first or some kind of hybrid long after offices had re-opened. While many employees enjoyed the benefits of working from home, some, especially those newly hired, found themselves missing the connection to the workplace and their colleagues.
The disruption of regular routine, the lack of “water-cooler” chats and regular company socializations, which help shape perceptions of company culture, were missing for employees. For employers, “culture” was much harder to demonstrate within new working models and greater care and consideration was needed to help employees feel a connection to the organization and their work.
A Gallup poll found 50 percent of respondents felt burnt out and completely disengaged at work, leading to the phenomenon now known as quiet quitting. The term, recently made viral on social media, refers to workers not feeling compelled to go above and beyond in the workplace.
A study from Mckinsey found the number one reason employees were quitting their job was a lack of career development and advancement. And, for those who chose to quit during the great resignation, a Pew Research survey found those who are now employed elsewhere are more likely than not to say their current job has better pay, more opportunities for advancement, and more work-life balance and flexibility.
When done efficiently and with measurable outcomes, mentorship programs at work can mutually benefit both employers and their employees. Formalized mentorship at work is increasingly becoming a part of an organization’s HR initiatives in order to help solve the issue of connecting, uplifting, engaging, and developing the skills of their employees. In emulation of “water-cooler talk”, mentorship can be used to facilitate employee connections and incite feelings of collaboration across the organization.
An organization’s facilitation of authentic connections between mentor and mentee has shown promise in the development of leadership qualities for both.
For employers, mentorship can also be used to help support employee retention and development. For employees, mentorship allows the opportunity to gain cross departmental insight which creates lateral role opportunities and develop their skills for promotions – all without leaving the organization. When it comes to career progression, a case study by Sun Microsystems reported that both mentees and mentors are five to six times more likely to be promoted than those who do not participate in mentorship.
When employees feel valued and are given opportunities for learning and advancement through tools like mentorship, they are naturally more inclined to stay with an employer. Fostering these relationships that encourage opportunities for growth and development can diversify workforces at all levels, create an engaged and collaborative environment and enhance loyalty amongst employees while promoting a culture of progress.
As seen in the areas above, mentorship can be a powerful tool to optimize a multi-generational workforce, facilitate career pivots, build and strengthen communities as well as engage and ignite leadership in organizations.
Mentorship can mutually support the goals of leaders while simultaneously inspiring confidence, engagement, passion and connections amongst the workforce. Its versatility within the world will continue to cement its importance as a tool for leaders and employees alike in order to continue navigating the changes 2023 will bring to the world of work.
Huddle publishes commentaries from groups and individuals on important business issues facing the Maritimes. These commentaries do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Huddle. To submit a commentary for consideration, contact our editor, Trevor Nichols: [email protected].