With the evolution of working formats over the past few years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for mentoring has never been more relevant.
The move away from being in the office Monday to Friday has led to many benefits, such as more flexibility and increased productivity, however there are some negatives.
When we consider graduates and young professionals do not have the same amount of time that they once did to absorb and learn from their more experienced peers while spending time in the office, their ability to progress, ask questions and learn from others has been reduced.
Experienced professionals also need support and guidance to develop themselves, identify career goals and have a critical friend to challenge their thinking – it’s the adage that you never stop learning and who better to learn from than someone whom you admire or who has the experience and skills needed to develop you as an individual.
This leads to the question of: are traditional mentoring schemes relevant in the new working environment and is there even a need for these schemes?
Anecdotal evidence suggests 70 per cent of Fortune 500 firms are running a formal mentoring programme. So there is still a recognition for the need to provide mentoring within established firms, but what about firms who do not have the scale or resource to offer a mentoring scheme themselves?
The CISI launched its mentoring programme on July 4, and just over a month later more than 350 members have joined the scheme.
Samar Yanni, CISI's head of membership and professional standards, said she was "delighted by the response, which demonstrates the clear demand for peer support in the financial services profession".
And she questioned whether this was partly in response to hybrid working and whether members needed more guidance as a result.
Times have changed
The Centre for Mentoring and Coaching recommends businesses have both a formal agreement and robust learning goals in place. Its guidance is centred purely around work, which makes sense, but does this go far enough?
Hybrid working has blurred the lines between working hours and home life, multi-tasking between the two is a familiar concept now.
While work and career development should be the main purpose of a mentor/mentee relationship, it’s important to recognise that objectives are not exclusive to earning more money and taking on more responsibility, which has previously been seen as a gauge for success.
The pandemic has made people consider what’s important to them and as such what they want from their career is likely to have changed.
Previously the location of mentor and mentee would hinder mentoring relationships, whereas due to the day-to-day use of Zoom and Teams geographic location is no longer a prohibiting factor.
This increases the diversity of the mentoring pool and with online meetings eliminating travel time and cost, both mentor and mentee are able to be more efficient with their time.
