Employees are valuable assets to an organization. They are an overwhelmingly significant factor in its overall success. And to be a truly successful company with a progressive culture that draws intelligent and motivated employees, you need to have a diverse workforce—not just diverse in culture, but also perspective, work habits, social skills, and experiences. With a diverse workforce of individuals all working together toward a common goal, it is inevitable that some will butt heads at some point along the way. It could result from behavioral issues, ego clashes, concerns about job security, or top-level employees abusing their power. Even getting employees to collaborate in small groups could lead to problems with productivity and levels of contribution.
These are just a few examples. The truth is that friction can occur for a variety of causes. If left uncontrolled, it can escalate out of control and topple an organization from inside. While it is essential to foster a culture of diversity within your workforce, it is imperative that you also create an environment of balance that encourages employees to work on their differences and find common ground to build future achievements. It's not just small organizations that are challenged by workforce imbalance, but large and multinational organizations as well. Regardless of the size of your organization, the key to your company's success is creating balance in your workplace by employing experienced mentors and the HR department.
Mentors Creating the Difference
How do mentors go about creating balance? Mentors in the corporate sense are typically seasoned and experienced professionals with many years of expertise behind them. They've worked in strained or overly competitive environments at some stage in their careers, and they've learned, perhaps with the help of a mentor of their own, how to adjust and build the skills necessary to collaborate with individuals who think and work differently from them. A study posted by National Mentoring Day suggests that 67% of businesses reported increased productivity due to mentoring.
They've learned the value of putting their differences to work and the advantage of mixing ideas and skills to yield a more robust result. These are the skills and expertise that mentors have to offer toward creating a balanced workforce. Through the guidance of mentors, employees have the opportunity to learn how to manage conflict, put aside ego, and be open to different ways of thinking and working. Employees learn how to collaborate and work toward a common goal. While it may be true that we can never attain perfection (and probably shouldn't even be the goal), a workforce that fosters diversity and balance goes a long way toward achieving perfection. A balanced force is guaranteed to yield better performance, productivity, and efficiency, not to mention employee retention. Mentors are part of that balance, offering their knowledge and guidance as groundwork to employees who otherwise have to learn independently.
Mentoring Tips with MentorCloud
Suppose you are looking to learn more ways in which mentoring can foster a balanced workforce, contact the MentorCloud team. We can help you find new and novel ways to improve imbalances in your workplace, as well as educate your employees on best practices for resolving inter-company challenges. If this post was valuable to you, please feel free to share it across your social media channels. Also, please give us your thoughts on best practices and your experiences with mentoring in the comments section. Thank you for reading, and check back in every Monday and Thursday for original posts on the #powerofmentoring!
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