Employee Retention and Mentoring

Throughout 2021, the Great Resignation has been affecting the larger workforce. Some have also called the Great Resignation the Great Reshuffle, Great Reprioritization, or the Great Re-Invention, among many other names. However, the common theme is that more people willingly leave their jobs en masse, whether due to taking on better-paying jobs or getting away from jobs that simply aren’t providing the kind of security and benefits they’re looking for.
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While the Great Resignation is also known as the ‘Big Quit,’ quitting a job isn’t the only thing at the forefront of this workforce phenomenon. Many people who left jobs during the Great Resignation went elsewhere for better pay, particularly those on low wages in the service sector. Job openings have also increased during the Great Resignation, particularly in the accommodation and food services sector, creating one out of every three new net jobs in 2021, despite being among the hardest hit by the pandemic. 
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The issue is not that people don’t want to work. They want better, whether improved pay or a more welcoming work culture. Employees increasingly feel that they aren't receiving enough support from leadership or being invested in. Especially in skilled labor and knowledge segments, employees switch jobs because they feel the professional landscape cares little about promoting strong professional development and harmonious work culture. Millennials especially prioritize cultural fits above all else, and 86% of job seekers avoid companies with poor reputations due to their company cultures. Regarding development, nearly 70% of employees would work harder at their respective jobs if they received increased recognition at work. 
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People in the 30-45 age group have seen the sharpest increases in resignation rates during the Great Resignation, with an average increase topping the 20% mark. Those in the 20-25 age bracket, by contrast, saw decreased resignations due to greater financial insecurity and the lessening demand for entry-level workers. Many of these employees are delaying their job transitions due to pandemic-related uncertainty or reaching a breaking point due to excessive workloads. Alternatively, a greater demand for mid-level employees and the increasing shift to remote work has diminished the need for entry-level workers. Concerns over a lack of in-person training and diverse skill sets have caused employers to look elsewhere during the hiring process.
Resignations are most notable in the healthcare and tech industries, with 3.6% and 4.5% increases respectively compared to 2020. In those industries, and across workplaces as a whole, there is high demand for improved employee retention practices, with 87% of people expressing as much in one study. The need for retention strategies like mentorship is there. But, how can mentorship help employee retention? 

Mentoring is a skill that taps into people's existing skills, knowledge, and experience in senior positions (or high-performing employees). Their skills and knowledge are transferred to the people being mentored. Mentoring can be done in any of the following three ways:

Mentoring has profound effects on the operational efficiency of an organization. 
For one, mentorship programs help organizations hoping to attract talent to promote and provide the kind of social links that employees seek. Mentors have strong links to people and/or groups within the organization. Additionally, mentoring rewards employees professional development and growth while also providing a sense of belonging, helping employees understand how integral their roles are. Organizations improve their ability to retain talent by providing the skills development employees need to be coupled with social ties to accommodate new talent trying to fit into a working environment. 
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When mentoring works, it spearheads a paradigm shift within the organization, with more of a focus on modern mentoring and mentoring software than more traditional mentoring styles. Traditional styles rely on senior officials relaying their experiences and their best advice to younger employees. Today’s mentoring focuses on trusted two-way relationships between mentor and mentee where both parties learn and grow during their interactions, both on a professional and personal level. Because of the modern style of mentoring in the workplace, the skill sets required to be a mentor have changed as well as the business value attached to mentoring. 
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Successful mentorship initiatives close generational and engagement gaps within companies. And, it shapes employees into more efficient workers, willing change agents, and leaders.

With technological transformation sweeping various industries, as necessitated by the pandemic, companies are gradually investing in mentoring software to better implement mentorship programs to aid employee retention. 
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Mentoring software is a digital platform used by companies of all sizes to execute and manage successful mentorship programs in organizations. The software matches mentors and mentees, schedules mentorship sessions, and tracks the progress of mentoring relationships. Mentoring software also scales mentorship, making activities clear and adding more effectiveness to personal and career development practices.

The software helps everyone, from emerging companies to more established ones. Around 71% of Fortune 500 companies have formal mentorship programs in place, with some using mentoring software to improve implementation. 
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Additionally, mentoring software programs take away some of the manual stresses involved when setting up mentorship initiatives. Some of the manual challenges involved when creating and executing mentorship programs include: 

Using mentoring software takes away the challenges mentioned above, improving the effectiveness of mentorship programs. They remove matching bias by establishing data-based smart mentor matches to determine which mentors and mentees work best together.

Additionally, the software platform allows mentors and mentees to communicate consistently, including from remote locations. And, mentoring software includes key performance indicators and other trackable metrics that help employers measure success and ROI. By doing virtual mentoring, employees have access to mentors and leadership professionals while working remotely, a particular attribute considering that remote working will be around for the foreseeable future.
 
Mentoring software establishes connection plans and targeted campaigns to provide personalized guidance for employees while advising best practices for mentoring relationships. Employees and their mentors can access mentoring software on their personal computers or phones.
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Leadership and development experts in charge of mentoring software can read insightful data such as how many matches and mentoring sessions have taken place and how many goals set throughout the employee mentoring program have been set/completed. Some cloud-based software programs allow businesses to filter by job roles, locations, and departments. With these filters and the overall features of cloud-based mentoring software, employers can quickly identify skill gaps and improvement areas within the organization, becoming more resourceful by improving the staffers' skills.
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The pandemic has been accelerating the enterprise adoption of remote-hybrid operational structures. As employers and employees become accustomed to working across geographic barriers, cultural differences, and opposing time zones, mentoring software programs are becoming a foundational component of stable, efficient operations.