Defining mentorship: a comprehensive guide

Explore our comprehensive guide to defining mentorship, as well as looking at its impact on employee engagement and retention.

What is mentorship?

Mentorship, or mentoring, can be defined as the guidance provided by a more experienced individual to someone seeking advice or support, often existing within a professional or educational context. At Indigo, we believe that everyone should have someone they can turn to for help - someone who has been in their shoes and knows what they're going through. This applies to all sorts of situations, from a fresher at university to a new starter at a large company to someone just starting out in a networking group.

Learn more about how Indigo helps connect your members to support.

Defining mentorship in the context of the workplace:

In the workplace, mentorship is typically defined as a relationship where a more experienced professional provides guidance, advice, and support to a less experienced colleague. For new starters, a mentoring relationship can be hugely beneficial in helping them settle into a new role or company, get to grips with key company insights and help them build confidence.

For the mentor, being involved in a mentoring relationship helps them to both build on and demonstrate their leadership qualities, contributing to their own professional development and even helping them stand out for promotion.

How does mentoring relate to professional development?

For mentees, mentoring contributes to their professional development by helping them settle into new roles more quickly, as well as enabling them to learn key insights and knowledge from more experienced members of their team. This accelerates their professional development.

For mentors, mentoring is all about demonstrating and practising leadership qualities. This contributes to their professional development by helping them to build on skills that may make them more eligible for advancement in the future,

How would you define mentorship in the context of employee engagement?

In the context of employee engagement, mentorship can be defined as a strategy to foster connection, growth, and a sense of belonging among employees.

By creating a company culture where support from mentors is commonplace, you encourage more staff to open up and share ideas, as well as making them feel comfortable enough to ask questions. All of this goes towards fostering a more engaged workforce.

What is the definition of mentorship in terms of employee retention?

Mentoring is a strategy that helps keep employees engaged, motivated, and committed to the organisation - and as such, can help to contribute to employee retention! At Indigo, we address 50% of all the issues that may cause an individual to leave their organisation, demonstrating that an effective mentorship program is a powerful tool in helping to improve employee retention.

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