The Age of Mentoring

Q – So, who is his handsome chap?           A – Odysseus

This is the Age of Mentoring

In Greek Mythology, Odysseus of Ithaca went to fight in the Trojan War and entrusted the care of his son, Telemachus, to an older and wiser friend, Mentor. Telemachus and Mentor developed a strong relationship built on the foundations of guidance and support.

The word “mentor” has therefore come to mean teacher, counsellor, coach, facilitator, motivator and friend.

Mentoring in the Workplace

Mentoring programs are a very cost-efficient way to get employees engaged and empowered. You can develop the talent you already have and increase productivity across the organisation. Mentors should not be a Line Manager, friend or family member.

Why Start a Mentoring Programme?

Although our business travel industry continues to recover, we have clearly lost a great number of talented people. As such, we must ensure that our recruitment, retention and development strategies and programmes are at the very core of our business.

Starting a Mentoring Programme

Starting a mentoring programme in your business allows you to capitalise on your greatest resource, your employees. Harnessing the power of mentoring has the potential to achieve huge gains for an organisation, not just in training and development but also with staff engagement, motivation and retention. A mentoring programme is a strong contribution to talent development goals such as succession planning and ensuring solid leadership development. It speaks loudly to employees that the organisation is willing to invest in its employees – which in turn can boost recruitment efforts – which is critical at this time in the business travel industry.

Developing the Mentee

For the Mentee – they feel that the organisation is investing in them; they develop confidence and skills; and it gives practice in accepting feedback from a consistent source.

Benefits for the Mentor

There are also benefits for Mentors – strengthening listening skills; a great learning tool for the mentor themselves; an increased sense of self-worth and fulfilment and providing an added sense of purpose and career responsibility.

Post COVID Recovery

As part of your post-Covid recovery and development, put in place a mentoring programme for your business that is both structured and staged in its approach. For example, new employees should be allocated a ‘buddy’ to learn the ropes, but employees with a few years of experience should be matched with a career mentor to help them grow in their position.

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Sirius Talent Solutions are not just business travel recruitment specialists, we can also provide your organisation with a tailormade Mentoring programme. We can establish a programme for you on a project basis or run it for you on an outsourced basis or we can also run training sessions for your Mentors to set them up to support their Mentees appropriately.

For further details, call (01932 562007) or email:  [email protected]