Workplace mentorship is more important in today’s professional world than ever before. The experts at VPA breakdown why mentorship is so crucial within the workplace.
Mentoring is more important than ever in today’s professional world. For employees to grow in their careers, they must build up their leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills. Workplace mentorship and learning from a trusted and experiences guide can help employees develop those abilities, navigate office policies, and understand how to handle workplace challenges.
Workplace mentoring for both women and men employees can also benefit organizations by building employee loyalty and increasing retention. After all, when examining companies and how they become successful, one commonality is that successful companies have excellent leaders. And with excellent leaders come excellent employees… just like the remarkable team at Valbridge Property Advisors!
The Importance of Workplace Mentorship
Both women and men employees are in need of mentors in order to gain the proper skills, learn how to build a wide network, access to role models, acceptance and affirmation, and ultimate career success.
For younger employees, mentorship plays a pivotal role in which career path they ultimately choose and their potential success in those chosen fields. Studies have shown that women (and men) with mentors are more likely to be successful than those without. A mentor provides professional guidance and shares knowledge and advice with their mentee. Mentoring relationships have many long-lasting benefits and can offer opportunities that women previously may not have had.
Personal Workplace Mentorship Benefits
Mentorship has numerous personal benefits for both the mentor and the mentee. That’s why, at VPA, we stress the importance of these crucial and extremely rewarding personal relationship.
A mentee benefits because they will be able to foster a relationship and work closely with an employee with advanced knowledge and experience. They can be guided through solving a problem or critiquing their own work in the CRE field. Furthermore, mentors can provide tips on career growth and introduce the employee to other professionals. As the mentee matures within their career growth, a mentor may remain a valued adviser to the mentee.
Mentorship can also help in defining career goals.
In order to know where you’d like to go and to be successful; you need to know how to get there. Mentors have vast experience to help you to put a clear plan in action to get there. This vast experience also helps within navigating company policies and work politics. Mentors are valued individuals to turn to who will keep information private and confidential.
Employer Workplace Mentorship Benefits
At VPA, we believe that our team as a whole benefits directly from our employees’ mentorship relationships. Why is that? By offering a mentorship program as a part of VPA’s core process, we hope to send the signal that the well-being and success of our employees is important and valued (because it is!).
By being invested in our employees’ personal and professional successes, we hope to convey the core value that we are always ready to go the extra mile for our VPA team.
Workplace mentorship enables our employees to reach their full personal and professional development as well as promotes their personal and professional development in a strategic and supportive manner. Likewise, mentoring motivates and engages top-talent employees.
Workplace Mentorship and Women Employees
Women frequently directly benefit the most from workplace mentorship programs. In fact, women oftentimes indicate that the presence of a supportive mentorship program is what ultimately drives their decision to remain within their organization. That’s why, at Valbridge, we have great pride in our Valbridge Women’s Council (VWC).
VWC provides a platform for the growth and development of Valbridge Property Advisor’s professional women through mentoring and education, national recognition, networking opportunities and other resources that provide opportunities for advancement and self-improvement. Our vision is to empower VPA professional women for advancement, growth and development of in all facets of life!
VWC Mentorship Values
Workplace mentorship among women helps build networks. We notice sometimes that male employees tend to have access to vaster networks. That’s why the VWS utilizes mentorship, sponsorship, and coaching to foster an environment of strengths among our women in leadership.
We believe that “owning” our careers is critical to our success. In order for mentorship to be effective, it is important for women to realize their ambitions, weaknesses, and strengths. Working together, we create an unbreakable team of positive, empowered women!
Implementing Workplace Mentorship in Your Office
You may already know how a mentoring program can benefit your company, but your employees may not understand how mentorship can benefit them.
To gain support behind employee workplace mentorship relationships, make sure employees know why mentoring is important and how it can provide value in their careers. You can do this by asking your managers to simply have conversations with their team members — either one-on-one or in a small group setting — about the purpose of mentorship and how it can benefit both mentors and mentees.
To keep the mentorship program on track, set specific goals and ways to measure whether the mentoring program is making progress toward those goals.
Then, at certain intervals — for example, six months or a year — meet with your team to evaluate your company’s progress on its goals.
Mentors in the workplace can help employees increase their effectiveness, advance their careers and create a more productive organization. So bottom line: mentoring can be a win/win/win (for the company, the mentor, and the mentee alike), but it has to be imbedded formally into the culture of the company.
A Key to Success
Workplace mentorship is a “need to have,” not a “nice to have.” Additionally recognizing and valuing employees who take time to mentor and those who lead the initiatives needs to be on every team leader’s priority list.
These tips should help you find good candidates for mentors and mentees, and implement an effective mentoring program to strengthen all parts of your organization. For a deeper conversation about how to help your employees bring their best selves to work, get in touch with the experts at Valbridge Property Advisors. Through the VWC and an overall team approach at VPA, we pride ourselves on the success of our company culture and workplace mentorship tactics.