No doubts that mentoring could have a profound impact on the business if it would be implemented effectively.
I noticed that mentoring is poorly practiced in my company. It takes a long time to streamline the new hires fully into the business.
Definitely there is a better practices of implementing the effective mentoring which can speed up the streamlining and the full engagement of the new hires and the mid-careers into the business.
Mentoring should be an essential responsibility for each experienced employee and he should be fully committed to it and shouldn't be handled as a sideline tasks which can be compromised.
Whenever we implement the mentoring, it becomes totally subjective process which is up to the level of commitment of the individual and it is not following a systematic and standard approach to ensure its effectiveness.
My manager was complaining from the poor knowledge and reliability of the local staff. I told him that happened basically because of the poor mentoring you have in this business unit. They can't work independently and they should be closely mentored and gradually delegated in the different assignment. Specific development objectives and Training and development plan should be in place.
Effective Mentoring should be well rewarded and appreciated to encourage the experienced employees to contribute and invest their effort and time in this process.
For instance, if the objective of the employee X to work as independent team lead after two years then the mentor should ensure that he is following the appropriate career and development path to achieve this goal and the employee should be informed about this midterm objective to fully adopt it and consent to it.
What we are doing is simply throwing the new hires into the ocean and who will swim will continue and who will sink will be abandoned. This is definitely the worst way of developing the people and the organization. Learning through the very hard and most stupid and primitive way.
As a process it should be continuously improved by the measuring of its success criteria like the time span and the progress and the number of mentee.
Distance learning and web conferencing and captured expertise could speed up the process and free it from the constraint of the number of experienced mentors in many locations.
Mentoring should be core process in each organization and business unit as it was always for the small workshops where the carpenter was mentoring the new green hire and gradually delegating to him the different assignments and that how was the knowledge transferred from generation to another.
