Mentoring in the UK: Why It's a Must for Organisations

The UK government has been active in promoting mentoring in the country. In 2012, former Minister of Parliament of State for Business and Enterprise, Mark Prisk, launched the Get Mentoring initiative as a way of helping businesses across the UK get the support they need. A decade later, the National Mentoring Day recorded the biggest number of support coming from over 170,000 organisations, including Google and The Football Association (FA).

Also, a government report revealed that 76% of businesses in the UK paid tribute to mentoring as influential to business growth. From that number, 60% said that mentoring helped develop their business strategy. Over 52% attributed mentoring to helping boost their revenue. The report also showed that 66% of businesses with a mentoring program helped them survive.

These numbers show just how the UK government and businesses in the UK have recognised the importance of mentoring in organisations. If you haven’t invested in a mentoring program in your workplace, it’s about time you do. We’ve outlined some of the reasons why it’s time to invest in mentoring in the UK. 

4 Benefits of Investing in Mentoring in the UK

Mentoring programs produce a number of benefits to organisations and their workforce. As the demand for mentoring continues to grow among Gen Z, you should consider investing in a mentoring platform for your workforce. Here’s how your organisation can benefit from a mentoring program in place: 

Encourages Employee Collaboration

Adopting a mentoring program in your organisation can encourage employees to engage with other people in the workplace. Mentoring programs can be set up to match mentees and mentors across different Departments/teams, which encourages cross-company collaboration. New relationships are formed, employees better understand different business areas and company silos are broken down.

Improves Company Culture

Mentoring fosters a healthy and positive workplace culture, which in turn, leads employees to feel happier and more satisfied in their jobs than those without a mentor. With the healthy exchange of ideas and satisfaction that employees get from mentoring, individuals feel valued and included. This positivity among mentored employees can affect others in the workplace, which leads to a better company culture for everyone in the organisation.  

Develops Stronger Leaders 

While organisations may choose to hire new external candidates to take on senior leadership and managerial roles, it’s better to promote someone from an internal position where possible. By investing in mentorship, employers can develop stronger leaders as they build their leadership skills before the need arises. Best practice mentoring programs will train mentors on ‘how to be a good mentor’, further improving their mentoring, coaching and leadership skills. Staff (who are aspiring first-time people leaders) may volunteer as a mentor as a stepping stone into a leadership role (mentoring can be a safe space to practise mentoring and coaching skills).

Boosts the Organisation’s Reputation 

87% of Gen Zers want to land a job that will teach them valuable lessons related to their field. Because of this, they tend to look for an organisation that promotes learning and development - especially organisations with mentoring. Many organisations will state they have mentoring as a key benefit. However, if you ask these organisations about their mentoring program, they often don’t have anything formal and rely on staff to seek out their own mentors. Mentoring software, on the other hand, uses science-based matching to pair mentors and mentees to kickstart mentoring relationships in the organisation. This benefit sets the organisation apart from others (especially one that all staff can participate in). It also acts as a strong differentiator and talking point for your recruitment team. Having a strong employee value proposition is incredibly important to attract top talent in a competitive market. 

Conclusion

In this article, we summarised why mentoring is a must for organisations, including some of the key benefits. Keen to learn more about how your organisation can benefit from mentoring? Read this article which summarises eight reasons why organisations need mentoring. 

In today’s environment where it’s challenging to retain staff, your organisation can benefit from running a mentorship program. We’ve helped small and large organisations by implementing scalable and streamlined mentoring programs, leveraging the latest technology and best practice support from Organisational Psychologists, reducing the HR admin by over 80% and achieving over 90% matching satisfaction. Book a demo to see our mentoring platform in action and how we can help you today.  

Resources: 

1. Prisk, Mark. (2012, March 12). 15,000 mentors for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Gov.UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/15-000-mentors-for-small-businesses-and-entrepreneurs. 
2. Baker, Chelsey. (2022, December 21). Why UK businesses must incorporate mentoring in 2023. FE News. https://www.fenews.co.uk/fe-voices/why-uk-businesses-must-incorporate-mentoring-in-2023.. 
3. Jones, Emma. (2022). Mentoring Matters: The what, why and how of building a mentoring army to unlock growth. Enterprise Nation, Newable, abm. https://a.storyblok.com/f/102007/x/ead24d2fe4/mentoring-matters-report.pdf. 
4. Hong, Cheryn. (2021, July 19). Gen Z: New Study Finds Concerns of Mentorship and Making Labor Valuable Among the Youngest and Most Diverse Generation. The 74 Million. https://www.the74million.org/article/gen-z-new-study-finds-concerns-of-mentorship-and-making-labor-valuable-among-the-youngest-and-most-diverse-generation/. 
5. Wronski, Laura, SurveyMonkey, Cohen, Jon. (2019, July 16). Nine in 10 workers who have a career mentor say they are happy in their jobs. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/16/nine-in-10-workers-who-have-a-mentor-say-they-are-happy-in-their-jobs.html. 
6. Boucek, Adrian. (2018, August 23). State of the Global Workplace - Gallup Report (2017). Gallup. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/state-of-the-global-workplace-gallup-report-2017/111021420. 
7. SkillFuel. (2022, August 29). Internal Vs. External Recruitment: Which Is Better?. https://www.skillfuel.com/internal-vs-external-recruitment/.