Mentoring remains an important learning and development experience

CANBERRA, Australia - Nov. 15, 2022 - PRLog -- Mentoring is a mutually beneficial relationship that seeks to impart knowledge with the aim of professional and personal development. The mentor is usually skilled in specific areas of knowledge the less experienced mentee is seeking advice on. In their latest article, the Acorn subject matter experts did a deep dive into mentoring, delving into program structure, benefits, implementation and identifying problems.

Mentoring can be more than just a one-on-one experience. It can involve multiple mentors for a group of mentees. It can act as a formalised buddy system. And with the explosion of remote work occurring after the pandemic, it can even be done virtually.

When mentoring is done right, it can improve and validate leadership capabilities and boost job confidence. It helps create network opportunities. Mentoring also sees better knowledge transfer and enhanced upskilling.

Implementing a formal mentoring program involves crowdsourcing and the creation of structured programs. The Acorn experts break down implementation into six steps: Define purpose and goals, flesh out the program, identify mentors and mentees, define mentee objectives, set group rules, and review and measure.

"Mentoring develops capabilities on both sides of the relationship," said Blake Proberts (Co-Founder and Managing Director). "Mentors get to hone their leadership skills, while mentees gain valuable on-the-job experience, with the added benefit of having a psychologically safe but professional challenging environment to do it in."

Despite all their advice, the Acorn experts recognise that mentoring programs can still fall short. Three reasons stand out to the experts: Lack of training, poor matchmaking and skipping milestones.

You can read the Acorn experts' full article about mentoring on Acorn Labs: https://hubs.ly/Q01r58-F0

Pursuit Technology is one of Australia's fastest growing HR technology companies. Pursuit, via Acorn LMS, takes a different view to strategically enabling HR and L&D teams compared to traditional providers. Rather than focusing on analytics after learning experience, their products use workforce planning and capability frameworks prior to any learning. By linking to a company's strategy, Pursuit products can inform organisational capability gaps and suggest education, deliver this education, then measure the impact – proving business impact by the HR and L&D team in a quantifiable way.