Introduction
Today’s employee has different expectations from work than
employees have had in the past. Employees want their organizations to offer
extensive opportunities for growth, learning and advancement. In addition,
employees have expectations that go beyond the present. The vast majority of
employees in the organization have aspirational desires for career advancement.
A challenge HR professionals and learning-development staff and supervisors are
experiencing is guiding employees toward their long-term goals. Some employees
aspire to become organizational senior leaders and will likely be in roles that
will prepare them for that opportunity. Other employees want specialized tracks
to success, tracks that will move them into senior positions with
responsibility over products and programs. Another group of employees isn’t
sure what they really would like their careers to be and will benefit from
exposure to different roles and responsibilities across different disciplines
in the organization.
Employees often have visions of their professional future that
require mentoring to achieve. Mentoring will maximize the benefit of the
experiences, learning and development they will have while working in your
organizations. In addition to mentoring, many employees will need coaching at
different stages of their development in the organization. Coaching may be
needed for many organizational roles and activities.
Mentoring
The nature of mentoring varies, and the type of mentoring we
give depends on the needs of different employees. What might seem an easy,
quick session with one employee might turn into an extensive engagement for
another. Mentoring in organizations may be formal or informal. Formal mentoring
usually involves a group of dedicated members of the staff willing to guide
employees through professional learning they do not know and may not
understand. Formal mentoring may be administered by the learning and
development office of human resources. Some organizations have ongoing informal
mentoring that manifests based on professional affinity between a prospective
mentor and mentee. The benefits of mentoring are significant and allow
employees to learn from past experiences of their mentor. This relationship can
help encourage social confidence, support individual community, and open
networks to the mentee they did not know existed.
Coaching
Organizations must be capable of responding to performance,
leadership, and other aspects of organizational life that require attention. An
activity that can help improve all these areas is coaching. Coaching is a
demanding skill that requires training and knowledge on how to execute it and
directly support the employee’s challenges. Some challenges require more
sophisticated coaching by certified coaches, but other less demanding coaching
needs are often performed by supervisors or managers.
HR Challenge
These are two individuals that are in need of professional
coaching or mentoring. Consider which approach would be most effective for each
case.
Joaquin aspires to become a manger in the organization. He is
currently in the very early stages of his career as a financial management
professional at CapraTek. He is currently struggling with understanding what he
could do to achieve his dream of becoming an executive at the company years from
now or possibly for one of CapraTek’s competitors.
Steve is a Baby Boomer who had worked at CapraTek, retired, and
was offered the opportunity to return to the company because he possessed a
very specific bio-tech background that was in high demand in the competitive
landscape. Now that he is back and has made some very significant contributions
to the company’s bio-tech projects, he would like to work in human resources,
as he wants to make his new career about people.
The HR business partner that you support as part of the learning
and development office for CapraTek has asked you to make a recommendation for
each of the individuals above to begin a mentoring or coaching process within
the company.
Instructions
For the two scenarios above, prepare a recommendation for HR
leadership in an internal memo that is 2–3 pages.
·
Select and explain
whether mentoring or coaching would be the better approach to support each
employee’s professional development needs.
·
Describe the nature of
mentoring OR coaching best practices, relevant to each individual.
·
Evaluate the benefit
to the organization from each individuals’ mentoring or coaching program.
·
Develop a
communication strategy to inform the direct managers and their employees about
the decision to initiate the mentoring OR coaching process.