With the constant demand of searching for and then retaining the right people for your organization it is imperative that organizations have first class hiring processes in place. Empowering your managers to hire the right people is a key element of that hiring process. Ensuring that they have the right tools in order to be able to make those judgement calls is important. Understanding the organizational culture and being a supporter of that culture is crucial to the success of the hiring process.
Today we typically hire based on fit for the organization and not so much on the skills. We can teach skills but we cannot teach being a good fit for the organization. Mentoring those managers through the hiring process is a great way to ensure that they have the skill sets and even more so understand that mentoring is part of the organizational culture.
Also read: Why You Should Have A Mentoring Culture In Your Company
Research has shown that mentoring reduces employee turnover and increases employee productivity as a result of an on-boarding process that includes mentoring. Here is an example of what the research is saying:
“Professor Jonah Rockoff researcher out of Columbia University illustrates that mentoring not only reduces employee turnover, but also improves the skills of new employees, increasing the amount of productivity that you will see in the newly on-boarded staff members. After studying the habits of students in New York City schools and how they perform with and without mentors, Rockoff found that students who received mentoring had the best performances out of all of the students observed, and that they had a lesser chance of dropping out than students who were not mentored. These observations can be applied to business as well, with the concepts of mentoring remaining the same.
Rockoff states that when an employee receives specialized attention and training from a mentor, they will perform better on the job, and will be much more likely to stay in the workplace. These concepts have been proven in corporate giants like Google, who have one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the world, and also implement one of the most effective mentoring programs.”
via Huffingtonpost
The investment in mentoring as part of your organizational culture is the right path to follow. The costs to replace employees that have gone to work someplace else (perhaps your competition) can range anywhere from 16 %( hourly-nonsalaried employee) to a high of 213% of their salary (highly trained employee).
Also read: How Does Mentoring Impact Employee Retention?
I worked with an organization that had a relatively high turnover rate and a culture of negativity and to some degree toxicity. We cleaned up their hiring process but most importantly we implemented a mentoring culture. The Return on Investment (ROI) for going on that journey was unbelievable. Productivity increased, there was more collaboration between employees, people communicated better, there was mutual respect between the employees and it became a culture of learning and development fueled by mentoring. Every employee received mentor training and then was challenged to put those skills into practice on a daily basis. The turnover rate dropped and people wanted to work for the organization. The hiring manager leveraged the new hiring process to assist in the selection of the right people for positions that were advertised based on them being a fit for the organization and embracing mentoring as an organization wide process.
In today’s market organizations that hire the right people and have empowered their managers to choose people wisely will have a competitive advantage. Organizations that embrace “The Gift of Mentoring” as a means to provide a learning and development environment fueled by mentoring will have a competitive advantage. “Can you afford not to?”
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