SE2’s mentoring program runs across all functions globally to retain skilled employees and develop leaders for the future by helping them realize their potential to perform their role effectively and efficiently, along with enabling them to take the next step in their career.
Program Details
Mentoring is provided at different levels at technology and software-as-a-service provider SE2.
From onboarding to leadership teams, mentoring is one of the key frameworks that allow associates to reach out to leaders they admire, get directional guidance, and understand how they need to prepare to reach their goals.
- New hires: A mentor is assigned as soon as a new hire is onboarded. The mentor in this capacity serves as a guide to navigate through the complex organizational structure and is aligned to help address any fundamental issues that might pop up during the employee’s first few years at SE2. In some cases, the mentor is also the employee’s career manager.
- Managerial mentoring: This is a program for all SE2 managers. Managers are partnered with mentors from outside SE2 in order to prepare for the next level. These mentors serve as a sounding board and coach to help SE2 managers through challenging trends and in making tactical decisions.
- Leadership mentoring: Mentors are assigned to help employees during specific programs. For example, SE2’s leadership development intervention on “Leaders at Change” had trained certified professionals act as mentors to each of the emerging leaders to help them through their journey of becoming strong leaders at managing change.
SE2 also introduced a strategy of reverse mentoring. The idea was to have associates mentor their mentors by reviewing topics they recently got trained on and share their learnings and ideas to see how mentors would react and respond to those concepts and utilize the opportunity to draft their business case for further approvals.
Results
Functional leaders shared feedback with the Learning and Development (L&D) team that the mentoring program provided much-needed directional guidance to associates who focused their learning on tracks identified and suggested by their mentors. This helped them communicate better, be more focused in their job role, and have a clearer vision for the future. This was also evident in their performance rating improvements.
Additionally, there was a 50 percent increase from the previous year in job postings being successfully closed internally, where existing SE2 employees were tapped for open positions.
