How to Start a Mentoring Program: Creating a Structure
The first step anyone thinking about starting a mentoring program should take is to define what the objective of the program will be. If you are aiming for higher minority retention rates, your program will be structured differently than if you were trying to develop leaders, teach a specific skill, or welcome newcomers to your organization.
In order to develop a program that best fit Morgan Stanley's goal-;to retain women employees in sales-;Barbara Adolf, who has since founded a human services consultancy in New York, started by choosing a group of leaders from different departments in the company to brainstorm a curriculum, and list what makes employees successful at the company, for mentoring sessions. Since there were more women who wanted to be mentored than available mentors, the mentees were put into groups with two mentors as facilitators.
But when Michelle Ferguson, the senior vice president of international operations of McGraw-Hill Education, developed a program that originally had a similar goal for its mentoring program, she ended up with a completely different format. In her program, women could choose their own goals-;anything from work/life balance to specific industry acumen-;and the company matched mentors and mentees based on who could best help achieve the goals. The mentors and mentees met individually for between one and three hours every month for a year.