Mentoring in Employee Development: Industry Applications and Tech Innovation

Introduction to Mentoring as an Employee Development Trend

Mentoring is considered a hot trend in employee training and development, though it has been around for many years in more simplified forms. As its use has grown in business, it is found in a number of industries, which have taken and altered the mentor-mentee relationship to best suit their own purposes. Done well, mentoring can benefit the new or inexperienced employee, the older or experienced employee, their teams, departments, companies, and industries. For that reason, mentoring continues to develop, even to the point at which web technology is suggested for getting the maximum benefit from this trend.

Defining Mentoring and Its Applications Across Contexts

Mentoring is a trend in employee training and development that has been so successful across numerous industries that it is being constantly refined and expanded. Mentoring is "usually a formal or informal relationship between two people—a senior mentor (usually outside the protégé's chain of supervision) and a junior protégé" (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, n.d.). Older and more experienced workers have years of earned experience, sometimes gained through trial and error, teaching them valuable work methods. In addition, through the process of maintaining their jobs over the years, older and experienced workers develop work ethics that sustain them in long-term employment with a company. Therefore, younger and inexperienced workers who interact daily with older and experienced employees can observe and adopt the experience and work ethic of these seasoned professionals (Authenticity Consulting, LLC, n.d.). As employee development scholar Pulakos points out, employees develop their capabilities by "training, job experiences, mentoring and other developmental activities" (Pulakos, 2004, p. 3).

Simultaneously, younger and inexperienced workers bring new energy and vision to traditional work methods. Consequently, the older and experienced employee can observe and adopt that new energy and vision in his or her own work. Mentoring is not limited to new-old employee pairings; it is also used for employees whose performance is found to be substandard. Some employees now deal with such employees through performance-improvement plans, which provide steps for improvement, feasible timetables for improvement, and necessary mentoring for the improvement (Anonymous, 2006). Furthermore, mentoring is also used to help exceptional employees move into other areas of a company. For example, experts realize the need for leadership development in Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) who wish to become highly effective Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). They advocate the mentoring of CFOs by CEOs so these CFOs can move beyond a company's financial department and into the presidential or CEO position (Kowalski & Campbell, 2000). In that instance, a CFO brings all his financial knowledge and mentor-honed skills to the chief position of a company.

Finally, mentoring is used to bridge cultural gaps in international companies. For example, Information Technology (IT) employees from the United States working in Great Britain have used mentoring between U.S. IT workers and British host country mentors to bridge cultural and national gaps. Here, Human Resources establishes, supports, evaluates, and improves international mentor relationships to ensure the best possible transition of U.S. IT employees working in Great Britain (Woollard, 2010). In sum, mentoring is not merely for the benefit of younger and inexperienced employees. It also benefits older and experienced employees, whether they are good workers, substandard workers, or exceptionally gifted workers, and ultimately enhances the performance of the entire company.

Industry Examples and Mentoring Program Refinement

The value of good mentoring is recognized in many industries. The Hershey Company, for example, uses mentoring in which older and experienced workers (typically "Baby Boomers") train and otherwise help younger and inexperienced workers. At Hershey, mentoring creates interactions between workers who might not otherwise interact, capitalizes on the mentor's experience and work ethic, and leverages the younger worker's contemporary worldview, energy, and new vision (The Hershey Company, n.d.). In addition, since Hershey is a global company and uses its mentoring program in other countries as well as the United States, the benefits of mentoring spread across the United States, Mexico, China, and every other country in which Hershey does business.

Tesco PLC, an international retail company, also uses mentoring, particularly in targeting key areas of discrimination. For example, Tesco maintains a network called "Women in Business" that represents and develops female workers' careers through "training, mentoring and career sponsorship" (Business Case Studies LLP, 2013). Mentors are also used extensively in the healthcare industry. For example, the nursing profession extensively uses mentors. In this context, mentors are trusted counselors or guides who are usually experienced and "well-seasoned" nurses in a new nurse's working unit or area. They assist new nurses in learning and adopting known best practices for treating patients. Meanwhile, the newer nurses bring their fresh education, energy, and vision to established practices and assist the nursing profession's goal of constantly improving patient care both in a healthcare facility and across the healthcare profession (Briddon, 2008).

Another example in the healthcare industry is found in the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania in association with Outcome Engineering. Here, a healthcare association is establishing and maintaining a "Just Culture" that works by "placing less focus on events, errors, and outcomes, and more focus on risk, system design and the management of behavioral choices" (The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania; Outcome Engineering, 2010). Among the tools used to focus less on blame and more on improving healthcare, the association uses "Just Culture Coaching and Mentoring" to help healthcare employees "step forward in the learning culture whenever mistakes are identified." The Just Culture, supported and used by the entire association, is designed to shift from a culture of blame to a culture of continual support and improvement in healthcare through teamwork. The Hershey Company, Tesco PLC, the nursing profession, and the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania are merely four examples in which mentoring enhances individuals, teams, departments, companies, professions, and entire industries.

The Evolution Toward Tech-Infused Mentoring

The widespread success of mentoring has led to more intense focus on and improvements in the mentoring relationship. At one time, mentoring was probably a rough pairing of an older worker with a new worker so the new worker could "learn the ropes." However, the examples of mentoring in the Hershey Company, Tesco PLC, nursing, and the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania show some refinements in those mentoring relationships to best benefit mentor, mentee, organization, profession, and industry.

In addition, high-tech developments have led to proposals for "tech-infused mentoring" (Corner, 2012). One pro-technology advocate argues that web technology can further improve mentoring by: finding a pool of eligible participants for a mentoring program; finding the optimal mentor-mentee relationships from the group of eligible participants; guaranteeing that all participants are given uniform information about the program; developing methods to keep mentors and mentees in contact; monitoring, analyzing, and communicating the achievements of the program within the program, within departments, across the organization and ideally to the world; and designing, establishing, and constantly improving the most efficient plan for a company's mentoring program (Corner, 2012). While the author does not specifically state exactly how web technology will achieve all those steps, the rapid growth and refinement of web technology makes such conjectures quite possible. The high-tech advocacy for mentoring is just the latest effort toward improvement of an employee training and development trend that began simply, evolved within numerous industries, and is still being honed for increasing effectiveness in business.

Conclusion: Mentoring as a Dynamic Business Practice

Mentoring is an old and new trend in business. Though it has probably been used in very simple forms for a number of years, it has lately been used with increasing success and refinement in numerous industries. Defined as "usually a formal or informal relationship between two people—a senior mentor (usually outside the protégé's chain of supervision) and a junior protégé," it has actually expanded to benefit newer and inexperienced workers, older and experienced employees, good workers, substandard workers, exceptionally gifted workers, workers who have endured discrimination, teams, departments, companies, and whole industries.

Four examples of mentoring are found in the Hershey Company, Tesco PLC, the nursing profession, and the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, in which the mentor-mentee relationship is refined and uniquely applied to enhance employees, their teams, their departments, their organizations, their professions, and ultimately their entire industries. The value of mentoring has led to advancements in the form and tools, from simple mentor-mentee relationships to, for example, "tech-infused mentoring." Tech-infused mentoring appears to be the latest evolution, at least theoretically proposing that web technology can find participants, pair them, give them uniform information, keep them in contact, and constantly improve their relationships and a mentoring program in general. The proliferation of mentoring relationships in many industries and the suggestions for constantly improving the mentoring relationship show that mentoring is one of the hot trends in employee training and development.