Mentoring benefits both the individual being mentored and the mentor. It improves the mentee's performance and satisfaction while helping them develop self-awareness, and allows the mentor to develop skills while helping someone else. Research shows that only 30% of employees are fully engaged at work and fewer than 50% want to remain with their current employer. Mentoring can help increase employee engagement and performance while reducing staff turnover through developing employees and making them feel more valued. Effective mentoring involves a personal relationship between the mentor and mentee and focuses on transferring knowledge and nurturing potential.

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Mentoring clearly benefits the
individual by improving overall
performance, increasing satisfaction
with their role and developing self-
awareness. The mentor enjoys the
satisfaction of developing
transferable skills and helping their
mentee - and the recognition of the
organisation. For employees who
feel valued generally show loyalty
and commitment above and beyond
their pay-scale.
Recent research found that:
G only 30 per cent of people are fully
engaged at work
G fewer than 50 per cent wish to
remain with their current employer
G 68 per cent feel unsupported.
On the other hand, organisations
with highly engaged staff
outperform their low-engagement
counterparts in both the private and
improving performance, whereas
mentoring emphasises the transfer of
knowledge, and primarily focuses on
identifying and nurturing the
potential of the whole person. For
example, in the Mentoring Handbook,
it is defined as:
‘a confidential one-to-one
relationship in which an individual
uses a more experienced person as a
sounding board and for guidance. It
is a protected, non-judgemental
relationship, which facilitates a wide
range of learning, experimentation
and development. It is built on
mutual regard, trust and respect’
(Business Wales, 2013).
Much workplace learning takes place
informally, whether it’s someone
learning from a line manager or
peers learning from each other:
both provide opportunities for
everyone to grow and improve
together.
Exposure to good role models can
be a daily constant in an
organisation: in addition to
informal mentoring, you can
introduce a more structured
approach to ensure that the skills
and competencies that are
identified as being positive and
effective in the organisation are
embedded in your team. In essence,
mentoring involves motivating,
inspiring and challenging, and is
underpinned by nurturing,
confidentiality and integrity.
Alex Clapson, who until recently was responsible
for coaching and mentoring across the Welsh Public
Service, urges mentoring as a useful and cost-
effective add-on to your training programme,
which will enhance the performance of both parties
Mentoring and
your nursery
‘Mentors who talk
about competencies,
but act in ways that
make it clear they have
not truly taken them
on board themselves,
undermine both the
message and the
impact of mentoring’
‘If you want a harvest in
one year, grow a crop. If
you want a harvest in ten
years, grow trees. If you
want a harvest that will
last a lifetime, grow people’
Chinese proverb
G
rowing your own used to take
place in gardens and
allotments, but now it
happens in the workplace too, with
human capital, rather than crops,
being the harvest. And an increasing
number of individuals and
organisations are recognising
mentoring as a cost-effective way of
developing staff, improving staff
retention, increasing employee
engagement – and, of course,
growing their businesses.
A definition
What is mentoring, and how does it
differ from coaching? The growing
consensus is that coaching focuses on

2. 2. Group mentoring
This involves one mentor working
with four to six mentees at a time.
The group would usually meet
monthly to discuss developmental
and practice issues and develop
appropriate skills / knowledge. This
works well for organisations with a
limited number of mentors and a
large number of mentees.
A particular benefit is that mentees
not only learn from the mentor, but
also from their fellow mentees. On
the other hand, its effectiveness is
limited by the difficulty of regularly
scheduling several busy employees.
It also lacks the personal relationship
that most people value in mentoring.
For this reason, it’s often combined
with the one-to-one model.
Monitoring success
Many apparently successful
interventions are abandoned because
of a lack of data. “We know that
improvement has happened, but we
cannot prove it” is a phrase often
heard in business. Among the
techniques for measuring success, is
the DMAIC improvement cycle:
G Define: clearly define the problem
G Measure: get a baseline – How are
you doing today?
G Analyse: what does the data
indicate?
G Improve: generate and select
solutions
G Control: demonstrate that the
change has been sustained.
www.nmt-magazine.co.uk September / October 2013 NURSERY MANAGEMENT TODAY 25
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public sectors. The claim is that
£26bn in added GDP - or gross
domestic product - could be realised
from this wasted opportunity
(BlessingWhite, 2012).
Counting the cost
High staff turnover is a challenge
facing many businesses: the cost of
recruiting and training an individual
is estimated at £4,800. What’s more,
the average employee absenteeism
rate is 7.7 days per year – a cost of
£600 per member of staff (CIPD,
2011).
A more inclusive and engaging
approach with the potential to
reduce sickness and stress levels is to
introduce a mentoring culture, for
this supports both staff development
and staff retention, while helping to
build capacity. As such, it’s ideally
suited to succession planning. It can
also help with the transfer of skills
across the workforce, ensuring that
the organisation can withstand and
respond to change.
You can quickly recoup the
relatively low cost of a simple
mentoring programme, which
compares favourably with the
ongoing expense of cover for absent
staff. Indeed, mentoring can work in
most organisations, regardless of
size, culture, or sector.
Among the numerous mentoring
models available, those that are
particularly suited to the workplace
are one-to-one and group
mentoring.
1. One-to-one mentoring
For this, mentor is matched to
mentee, and progress is monitored.
They are matched on the basis of
experience, skillsets, goals,
personality and so on. Generally,
people are comfortable with this
approach, as it encourages a
personal relationship.
The mentee benefits from
individual support and attention,
not only from the mentor, but also
from the mentoring co-ordinator.
This works particularly well for
organisations that want to target a
specific group for development or
retention purposes, including
emerging leaders, highly skilled
workers or a specific affinity group
where you want to promote
diversity. The only real limitation is
the availability of mentors.
Choosing a mentor
Who can be a mentor? In essence, we
learn by watching others. It is
important, therefore, that the mentor
embodies the competencies they talk
about. Mentors who talk about
competencies, but act in ways that
make it clear they have not truly
taken them on board themselves,
undermine both the message and the
impact of mentoring. For this reason,
ongoing evaluation and feedback
from both parties is crucial.
I would advise you to incorporate a
code of ethics into your mentoring
programmes, such as the one the
European Mentoring & Coaching
Council has developed, which has
five cornerstones:
G competence (experience,
knowledge, and continuing
professional development)
G context (the mentoring intervention
should be appropriate for both
individual and organisation)
G boundary management
G integrity (maintaining
confidentiality)
G professionalism.
In conclusion, mentoring, which is
founded on the belief that employees
operate at their best when they feel
valued, utilised and included, is a
proven alternative to costly training
programmes. A learning relationship
monitored by someone who is not
your boss, underpinned by high-
quality supervision and continuing
professional development, makes
excellent economic sense in the
current climate, with increasing
constraints on budgets.
Putting the individual at the heart
of the organisation and investing in
their personal and professional
development increases their
productivity, effectiveness and
loyalty – and the chance of their
staying with you. Given the capacity
issues in many organisations and the
challenges of creating sustainable
organisational models, mentoring
offers the perfect solution. I
G Alex is a trainer and director at Talkworks Training & Development Ltd, which
provides coaching and training programmes as well as management, business and
interpersonal skills training. He is also a visiting lecturer at Swansea University.
E: alexclapson@yahoo.co.uk W: http://www.slideshare.net/AlexClapson
Twitter: @AlexClapson You can also find Alex on LinkedIn