How can your business benefit from mentoring apprentices?

Behind every successful apprentice lies a great mentor. Mentoring is especially important for an apprentice as in many cases apprentices are young people entering the workplace for the first time. 

For all apprentices, having a mentor in the business that they can turn to for advice, information and support has a significant impact not just on their experience but also their long-term career outcomes. In short, a mentor can play a vital role in the personal and professional growth of an apprentice.

Mentors come is all shapes and sizes and at one point in our lives we have all had a mentor. Perhaps yours was an older sibling or maybe a teacher at school or even a friend who ‘took you under their wing’ at some point. Put simply:

"Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen and a push in the right direction" John C Crosby

But mentors are not just for apprentices, a mentor can be significantly beneficial to any employee within your business. 

But what benefits does a mentor bring to the business?

Mentoring is by no means a one-way process that only benefits the mentee. A good mentoring relationship is a two-way process that generates wider business benefits. All mentees, whether that be an apprentice, an intern, a young person on work experience or a new employee, brings a new perspective and fresh ideas benefitting both the mentor and the organisation. 

In discussing processes with a mentee, the mentor may be prompted to challenge the existing way of working often resulting in improved business practices. Creating the role of a mentor is also an investment in that individual’s professional development. Through the mentoring experience employees are given the opportunity to develop leadership skills in a relatively low-risk environment.

Many global studies have found that having a mentor in the business not only improves the career outcomes for the mentee but can have additional benefits for the mentor and the wider organisation. Such benefits include:

• Improved employee engagement – the sense of career development, practical training and support employees get from mentoring leads them to feel positively about their organisation as a place to work.
• Improved employee retention – those who are part of mentoring programme report higher commitment and loyalty to the organisation. In contrast, according to Harvard Business Review (1), high achievers in large organisations cited a lack of mentorship as a chief reason why they left their last job.
• Improved employee inclusion – entering a new workplace, particularly if you are from an underrepresented background, can be disconcerting. A mentor can provide support and create a sense of inclusion.

In addition, employees who act as mentors often report:

• Greater job satisfaction
• Greater career success including promotions, pay rises and increased opportunities
• Perceived increase in work-related fulfilment

Becoming a mentor

Being a mentor is not simply allowing yourself to be shadowed. Steven Spielberg is quoted as having said:

“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”

A good mentor requires a set of core mentoring skills that need developing and nurturing. To maximise the benefits of mentoring to the organisation, time must be invested in developing the mentor. 

References

1. Harvard Business Review – Mentoring Millennials (May 2010)
2. SAP – Why Mentors Matter, Summary of 30 years of research – Lauren Bidwell
3. 8 Valuable Benefits of Mentoring – Mark Runyon (January 2020)