TVH Mentoring Program

Introduction:
Mentoring is most often defined as a professional relationship in which an experienced person (the mentor) assists another (the mentoree) in developing specific skills and knowledge that will enhance the less-experienced person’s professional and personal growth. Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. Mentoring can improve employee satisfaction and retention, enrich new-employee initiation, make the company more appealing to recruits, and train the leaders. And the best part is, it’s free. Unlike similar learning incentives like training programs or offering to pay for courses, mentoring utilizes the resources that the company already has. This case study on the Mentoring Program at TVH (Group Thermote & Vanhalst) has illustrated a true facts and issue in the monitoring program at any growing company.

In the mentoring program the conflict between the younger employees and the older experienced employees is inevitable. Most of the company and the managers or supervisors are facing such kind of issues in the mentoring program though the mentoring program is very important for the organization to ensure the share of expertise and skill within the organization. In the case of TVH, we can see that Paul Sanders, HR director at TVH, has launched the mentorship program to help older employees transmit their knowledge and know-how to younger employees.

This transition of expertise will help the TVH to keep the expertise and skill within the operation of the organization and develop the skills more. But after a while Paul Sanders found that there is a clear conflict between the younger employees and the older skilled employees after having a letter from a older respected employee named Freddy Jacobs. The older employees are getting worried about their career opportunities threaten by the new comers. But Paul Sanders know about the importance of the Mentoring program at TVH to ensure the flow of skilled workers and expertise. Now we have to analyzed the situation at the TVH and have to suggest some tools for Paul Sanders to handle such situation

Back Ground of the Case:
Group Thermote & Vanhalst (TVH) is a global organization that specializes in constructing and repairing forklift trucks. Though it is a growing global company, they had no system to leverage, store and transform the knowledge and skills of the employees. There is a great flow of new young employees at the TVH who have less knowledge and skill and the existing knowledge and expertise of the company is losing as the retirement of the old and the experienced employees. For that there may be a lack of expertise, knowledge and leadership in the forth future of the company. Understanding such situation, Paul Sanders, HR director at TVH has launched the Mentoring program within the organization where the old and experienced employees will share their expertise and experiences with the new young employees. After lunching the mentoring program within the TVH, Paul Sanders found that there is a clear conflict between the younger employees and the older skilled employees after having a letter from a older respected employee named Freddy Jacobs.

He informed the HR Director about his opinion on the mentoring program. He stated that they could not work their regular work for this mentoring program to teach the new younger employees. He also show his confusion about the quality of the new comers who have took the supervisory responsibility of the older employees though they have no knowledge about the operation or business. The older employees are getting worried about their career opportunities threaten by the new comers. But Paul Sanders know about the importance of the Mentoring program at TVH to ensure the flow of skilled workers and expertise. But the thing is that Paul Sanders have to optimize his system to manage knowledge and ensure exchange of knowledge efficiently.

Theoretical Background
1. What is Mentoring program?
Traditional mentoring focuses on developing junior employees (mentees) by pairing them with more experienced and often senior staff (mentors) for several months. Although this form of mentoring remains popular, mentoring as a strategy has expanded to include different formats such as group and situational, and for more purposes such as diversity training or high potential development. Today, smart organizations are realizing that a workplace mentoring program can serve the entire employee lifecycle.

Mentoring new employees can improve new hire retention rates. Mentoring aspiring talent enables company succession plans. And reverse mentoring can ensure senior executives stay current with new business practices and technology. Regardless of the form mentoring takes, it facilitates sharing knowledge, expertise, skills, insights, and experiences through dialogue and collaborative learning. 2. The Objectives of Mentoring:

Because mentoring is goal oriented and promotes professional and personal growth among participants, it helps attract, motivate, develop, and retain profitable talent while increasing productivity. Companies often want mentoring programs for the following uses: Employee career development

High potential development
Diversity training
Reverse mentoring
Knowledge transfer
3. What are the benefits of mentoring?
Mentoring benefits the organization, mentors and mentorees. A successful mentoring program benefits your organization by: Enhancing strategic business initiatives
Encouraging retention
Reducing turnover costs
Improving productivity
Breaking down the “silo” mentality that hinders cooperation among company departments or divisions. Elevating knowledge transfer from just getting information and to retaining the practical experience and wisdom gained from long-term employees. Enhancing professional development.

Linking employees with valuable knowledge and information to other employees in need of such information Using your own employees, instead of outside consultants, as internal experts for professional development Supporting the creation of a multicultural workforce by creating relationships among diverse employees and allowing equal access to mentoring. Creating a mentoring culture, this continuously promotes individual employee growth and development. Mentors enjoy many benefits, including:

Gains insights from the mentoree’s background and history that can be used in the mentor’s professional and personal development. Gains satisfaction in sharing expertise with others.
Re-energizes the mentor’s career.
Gains an ally in promoting the organization’s well-being.
Learns more about other areas within the organization.
Mentorees enjoy many benefits, including:
Gains from the mentor’s expertise
Receives critical feedback in key areas, such as communications, interpersonal relationships, technical abilities, change management and leadership skills Develops a sharper focus on what is needed to grow professionally within the organization Learns specific skills and knowledge that are relevant to personal goals Networks with a more influential employee

Gains knowledge about the organization’s culture and unspoken rules that can be critical for success; as a result, adapts more quickly to the organization’s culture Has a friendly ear with which to share frustrations as well as successes.

4. Different types of mentoring models in a structured program: One of the advantages of mentoring is that it can be adapted to any organization’s culture and resources. There are several mentoring models to choose from when developing a mentoring program, including: One-On-One Mentoring: The most common mentoring model, one-on-one mentoring matches one mentor with one mentoree. Most people prefer this model because it allows both mentor and mentoree to develop a personal relationship and provides individual support for the mentoree. Availability of mentors is the only limitation. Resource-Based Mentoring: Resource-based mentoring offers some of the same features as one-on-one mentoring.

The main difference is that mentors and mentorees are not interviewed and matched by a Mentoring Program Manager. Instead, mentors agree to add their names to a list of available mentors from which a mentoree can choose. It is up to the mentoree to initiate the process by asking one of the volunteer mentors for assistance. This model typically has limited support within the organization and may result in mismatched mentor-mentoree pairing. Group Mentoring: Group mentoring requires a mentor to work with 4-6 mentorees at one time. The group meets once or twice a month to discuss various topics. Combining senior and peer mentoring, the mentor and the peers help one another learn and develop appropriate skills and knowledge. Group mentoring is limited by the difficulty of regularly scheduling meetings for the entire group. It also lacks the personal relationship that most people prefer in mentoring. For this reason, it is often combined with the one-on-one model. For example, some organizations provide each mentoree with a specific mentor.

In addition, the organization offers periodic meetings in which a senior executive meets with all of the mentors and mentorees, who then share their knowledge and expertise. Training-Based Mentoring: This model is tied directly to a training program. A mentor is assigned to a mentoree to help that person develop the specific skills being taught in the program. Training-based mentoring is limited, because it focuses on the subject at hand and doesn’t help the mentoree develop a broader skill set. Executive Mentoring: This top-down model may be the most effective way to create a mentoring culture and cultivate skills and knowledge throughout an organization. It is also an effective succession-planning tool, because it prevents the knowledge “brain drain” that would otherwise take place when senior management retires. Problems and Recommendation:

Question 01: If I am Paul Sanders, How would I deal with the raised issues in the Mentoring Program at TVH? For the TVH the Mentoring Program is really inevitable for the managers to ensure the storage, transmission and leverage the knowledge and expertise of the employees. This mentoring program will help the older employees transmit their knowledge and know-how to younger employees. So If I were at the place of Paul Sanders, I cannot take off the mentoring program. I have to deal with the raised issues conflict between the older and younger employees. There are some strategies remanded here to deal with this raising issue in the Mentoring Program.

Developing Effective Program plan for Mentoring: A planned and effective Mentoring program can be a solution for this conflict or issues. The Paul Sander has to demonstrate and develop an effective Mentoring program where all the employees new or older will be incorporated and committed with each other. This model serves as a foundation to help you design and implement a successful formal mentoring program that is customized to meet your organization’s unique needs and culture. The strategies for building a formal mentoring program are the same whether you are designing a program for six partnerships or sixty. The Mentoring Connection Planning Process: STEP 1: Plan the program’s purpose and design.

STEP 2: Identify potential mentors and mentorees
STEP 3: Facilitate a joint orientation (mentor, mentoree, and supervisor). STEP 4: Match mentors and mentorees.
STEP 5: Provide mentoring training and tools.
STEP 6: Implement the mentoring plans and agreements.
STEP 7: Evaluate and track the progress and redesign as necessary. Creating Mentoring Culture: Paul Sanders has to develop mentoring culture within the TVH. A mentoring culture continuously focuses on building the mentoring capacity, competence, and capability of the organization. Establishing a mentoring culture is key to organizational health. It is a smart way to do business because of its power to enhance personal connections and maintain organizational vitality in the face of continuous challenge and change. Effective mentoring holds out the promise of achieving desirable results. It can improve retention, build morale, increase commitment, accelerate leadership development, provide ongoing career development, reduce stress, build teams, and facilitate organizational learning.

A mentoring culture encourages the practice of mentoring excellence by continuously: creating readiness for mentoring within the organization, facilitating multiple mentoring opportunities, and Building in support mechanisms to ensure individual and organizational mentoring success. Establishing Relationship among employees: Establishing relationships requires employers to understand the differences between age-based and cohort-based identities. Most people share a set of attitudes with those who had similar “coming of age” experiences. “When you enter adulthood, certain collective memories impact you,” Joshi says, citing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and September 11, 2001, as examples of collective experiences.

A cohort-based identity, in contrast, develops from a shared set of organizational experiences. Managers can try several strategies to cultivate cohort-based identities. For example, they can organize orientations or new employee meetings so workers connect based on starting at the company together. “It’s about entering the organization and being socialized into the organization,” Joshi says. New workers go through the same socialization and meet the same contacts. Negative developments also can produce intergenerational cohorts. In the 2010 study, researchers interviewed management from a large manufacturing company bracing for layoffs. The older employees had experienced economic downturns and counseled the younger employees on what to expect. This type of bonding laid the foundation for a shared, intergenerational experience after the furloughed employees were reinstated.

Succession planning also can develop cohorts as senior employees serve as mentors to up-and-coming leaders. Employees come to an organization socialized to understand hierarchies and succession of power because they have a family tree where generations move up the branches into new roles such as parenthood or grandparenthood, according to the study. Joshi says the concept of the family tree socializes younger workers to expect eventual succession while still acknowledging the contributions of senior employees. Employers, however, need to identify this succession instead of assuming workers innately understand their evolving roles. Information exchanges and mentorship programs are opportunities for senior employees to pass on information about the company.

Question 02: What would make the mentoring program a success? How would we define Failure? The mentoring program can be failed due to several reasons. Some of the causes behind the failure of the Mentoring program are as follows. To mentor is to serve as a trusted counselor or teacher. In an occupational setting, the key word in that definition is “trusted.” Unfortunately, mentoring programs often fail because this very basic ingredient is missing. Mentoring program failure might occur because the program’s goals are either fuzzy, or they’re all over the place, Rose said. Psychological obstacles often can get in the way of a successful mentoring program. In some companies in which it’s very competitive, Rose said it’s not even rational for mentors to want to succeed in mentoring their chosen employees.

Mentoring programs also might fail because of personal dynamics or generational issues. To make the Mentoring program successful at the TVH, Paul Sander has to give concentration and priority in some issues. These are: Preparation of the Program: Time spent thinking through what the programs is meant to achieve and how each aspect of it should be managed, supported and measured will be amply repaid later. Engaging the stakeholder group in the planning identifies barriers to success and occasionally radically changes the nature of the program. (In one case, feedback from the intended beneficiaries led to turning the program on its head, so they became the mentors instead!) Selection: Not everyone makes a good mentor. Some companies have assumed that the qualities of a manager or leader are such that they should automatically be able to perform the mentor’s role.

In practice, many managers are unable to escape from the habit of telling and advising. Many also lack the depth of self-awareness that characterizes an effective mentor. In general, the more convinced someone is that they are a “natural” mentor, the more lethal they are ikely to be. Training: The most successful in-company mentoring programs train both mentors and mentees and at least provide a detailed face-to-face briefing for line managers. The figures are stark. Without any training at all, less than one in three pairings will deliver significant results for either party. Training mentors alone raises the success rate to around 65%. Training both and educating line managers about the program pushed the success rate above 90%, with both parties reporting substantial gains. Process ownership: One reason for training both parties is so that mentees have the expectation and gradually to acquire the confidence and skills to manage the relationship; and so that mentors know how to help them do so.

Developmental mentoring, in particular, demands that the mentee helps the mentor to help them, by understanding the process and contributing to it. Post-training support: Initial training is rarely enough to give mentors more than a basic level of competence and confidence. Experience of hundreds of programs in more than three dozen countries shows that they both want and need access to continued expert advice on how to do the role and develop their skills; and that they greatly value the opportunity to share experience with other mentors. Measurement: Effective, appropriate measurement, especially at key points in the first 12 months, not only helps keep the program on track, but also stimulates mentor and mentee to good practice — for example, reviewing the relationship and what each is gaining from it. Many companies are now adopting a “balanced scorecard” approach to measuring their mentoring programs.

Question 03: Under What circumstances would we choose these training Processes (Mentoring Program)? Different Research indicates that mentoring is one of the important factors in business success. Mentoring provides a safe, protected learning environment. The mentored benefits from the mentor’s experience without having to go through the trial and error of learning the same lessons. Time is compressed; mistakes do not need to be repeated. Valuable lessons, knowledge, attitudes, and recognition of opportunities are passed on. The top 7 reasons given for establishing mentoring programs: To promote the retention of valued employees

To improve employees’ leadership and managerial skills
To develop new leaders
To enhance employees’ career development
To place high-potential individuals on a fast career track
To promote diversity
To improve employees’ technical knowledge
To exchange, store and leverage the employee knowledge, skill and expertise within the organization Mentoring program is inevitable. In any growing company like TVH There may be a significant flow of new young employees who have less knowledge and skill and the existing knowledge and expertise of the company is losing as the retirement of the old and the experienced employees. For that there may be a lack of expertise, knowledge and leadership in the forth future of the company. To handle this risk of lack of expertise and leadership, the companies have to make a system to share the skill and expertise among the employees to create the future leaders. Mentoring program helps in this purpose by exchanging the knowledge and skills and expertise among the employees.

Conclusion:
In today’s volatile business world, it’s extremely important for organizations to engage employees both intellectually and emotionally. Through mentoring, employees identify themselves as a vital part of the organization while creating a heightened level of ownership. By improving employee engagement and retention along with other company initiatives, mentoring helps the company’s bottom line while also ensuring that employees feel committed to accomplishing their work in accordance to the vision of the organization.

References:
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