All too often the benefits of mentoring in many industries are lost through a sense of conviviality “Let’s do this over coffee” and in some cases “Let’s have a beer after work occasionally and chat.”
Such an approach will not achieve good results unless they move social catch ups to a more formal process.
Mentoring requires a formal structure as the employee will have a sense of achievement and the leader will be able to measure the progress and end results.
Setting an employee a task to complete before the regular meeting each month is an excellent means of making them accountable.
The task can be anything from an essay on the corporate world or preparing or writing position descriptions.
Included as an integral component of employee development in Policies and Procedures, mentoring will enable management to assess employee development particularly in accountability.