Mentoring in Companies
Mentoring has been widely credited with being an effective tool for human resource development. Its application can be found in many diverse sectors such as −
- Manufacturing
- Tourism and Hospitality
- Petro-chemical industries
- Public sector/government
- Financial services
- Educational institutions
- Service industries
- Charities
Mentoring is used in organizations at different stages of employee engagement. It is a constant process in which an employee is involved with, right from the time of his joining the company to every step he takes up towards progress. Right from their induction, employees are assigned role models whom they can imbibe as much expertise and experience as possible from.
Potential candidates are groomed for higher positions in a timely and job-related manner so that he is ready to shoulder the desired responsibilities when they are handed over to him. This is done through providing job-related training, and sharing relevant knowledge so that the desired levels of expertise in the skill-sets can be observed in these people.
Mentoring also includes providing proper integration into a new process and assistance in major transitions in their professional life to new stages, enhance job-related knowledge and skills for the present so that the employees can easily adapt to the changing environments of the workplace.
Case Study: Significance of Mentoring at Zappos.com
Many organizations define their company’s working process as set of values. Their employees are expected to own these values as a part of their daily life at work. A good example of one such company will be Zappos, an online shoe and footwear apparel shopping site.
There are cases of people who used to work with Zappos.com, and were fired even when they were doing their jobs perfectly, if it was found that they were not leading their professional lives in the spirit of the company’s culture.
Zappos has ten core values to clearly define the Zappos Family culture, and these core values can be observed in everything the company does −
- Deliver WOW! Service
- Create fun and a little weirdness
- Build positive team and family spirit
- Pursue growth and learning
- Be passionate and determined
- Embrace and drive change
- Be adventurous, creative, open-minded
- Build open and honest relationships
- Do more with less
- Be humble
These values at Zappos are written into their organizational strategy. Values are often written down as part of the organization’s strategy. As their CEO, Tony Hsieh says, these values help them to delight the customers by providing them the right suggestion and information at the right time.
These values also help them to accept and respect people’s opinions, which helps them adapt to the changing demands accordingly, and improve their customer service.
They manage this through a constant mentoring of their supporting and developing staff, who are encouraged to maintain transparency at every stage of their business proceedings so that a blame-free working environment can be created.
Zappos invests a lot of time and effort in making new inductees understand what exactly the reasons behind these ten values of their company being so important to the functioning and growth of their company are. This mentoring makes the new employees understand the significance of these values in contributing to the company’s mission and strategy.
