DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

How mentoring can help your organisation.

INTRODUCTION.

Over the last decade, we've seen an increase in organisation interest in promoting and supporting diversity and inclusion within the workplace. For a company to thrive it's crucial that employees feel valued and supported. This means all employees, not just a select few. Having a diverse and inclusive workplace means that as a company you're able to equally support and employ individuals no matter their gender, race, religion, sexuality, ages, background and language. Recent research shows that to establish a successful diversity program, it's critical to create more opportunities and increase employee engagement. Opportunities present themselves in many ways, including mentoring programs which are often credited as being a crucial and integral part of having successful diversity and inclusion within the workplace.

"A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone."

The difference between diversity and inclusion.

There are a few key differences between diversity and inclusion. Diversity is all about representing different individuals within the workplace and creating awareness, bringing people together in the same environment. Inclusion, on the other hand, is about ensuring all employees have equal opportunities to contribute and influence the organisation, it's about introducing methods and strategies to make diversity work within the company.

Why does diversity and inclusion still matter within the workplace?

Workforce diversity isn't just a trend, it's something companies are now becoming aware of and prioritising. Diversity within the workplace is all about creating an inclusive environment that accepts the differences of all employees. By creating an inclusive workplace, you are truly enabling employees to reach their full potential whilst allowing your business to progress and develop. As a company, when you value and create awareness for differences, you're allowing individuals to contribute their experiences which will have a positive impact on the workforce.

Types of diversity in the workplace:

  • Cultural diversity
  • Race diversity
  • Religious diversity
  • Gender
  • Age diversity
  • Disability
  • Sexual orientation

BENEFITS OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION.

BIGGER TALENT POOL

  1. INCREASED EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
  2. IMPROVED PERFORMANCE
  3. GREATER DIVERSIFICATION OF SKILLS AND CREATIVITY
  4. DIVERSITY LEADS TO GREATER INNOVATION

MENTORING FOR DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION.

Simply put, mentoring is the act of an individual sharing their knowledge, skills and expertise with someone else, to support and guide them whilst meeting professional or personal goals. Anyone with experience can be a mentor, it's not just limited to someone older or in a senior role, when we look at mentoring that focuses on diversity and inclusion, there are several techniques this can be used. Mentoring to help diversity and inclusion can be done in both a traditional manner where a senior mentors a junior, or reverse mentoring can be arranged.

We recently surveyed our mentors and mentees at PushFar, unsurprisingly, 82% of those surveyed said that they thought mentoring was valuable to tackling diversity and inclusion hurdles head-on. After conducting this survey, we began to talk to individuals in inclusion groups (sometimes referred to as ERGs or ‘Employee Resource Groups’) to find out why they felt this. Our exploration found that individuals felt motivated and supported when they saw senior leaders and those in the organisation whom they could relate to, identify with and who understood possible hurdles they may face in their day-to-day working life.

THE BENEFITS OF MENTORING IN THE WORKPLACE.

GREATER JOB SATISFACTION

  1. INCREASED TEAMWORK
  2. REDUCED TURNOVER RATE
  3. IT CREATES A LEARNING CULTURE
  4. PROMOTES PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

3 TYPES OF MENTORSHIP PROGRAMS THAT CAN BOOST DEI.

Reverse mentoring.

Reverse mentoring pairs more experienced employees with younger and less experienced newbies in the organisation. The younger employee acts as the mentor, sharing their knowledge on inclusion within departments and providing insight into the employee experiences within the company.

Career mentoring.

A traditional one-on-one arrangement that places focuses on career development and progression as part of DEI strategy. This method showcases that the company is invested in their employees, wanting to expand growth and career progression opportunities.

The buddy program.

A buddy program is an effective way to increase new hire retention. It's a method where a newer employee is partnered with a longer-term member, to share knowledge. It's crucial for underrepresented employees to feel valued and appreciated within the organisation at an early stage. This specific type of mentoring can help form workplace relationships, increase engagement and build a strong company culture.

PLANNING A DEI MENTORING PROGRAM.

As shown above, every mentoring program is completely different, however, there are a few key best practices and pieces of advice to ensure success every time.

Define the purpose.

One of the most important steps when creating a mentoring program is defining the clear purpose of the program as a whole. This is particularly important in the case of diversity mentoring because it's easy to generalise. Having a clear purpose allows you to set distinct objectives and S.M.A.R.T goals. For example, setting goals such as "creating diversity engagement" is likely to be confusing for everyone in the organisation and also make it harder to measure results.

Know your audience.

Understanding your audience is crucial to the success and effectiveness of your mentoring program. It's important to have a clear understanding of the groups you're trying to support, whilst being sensitive to their needs, without devaluing your employees. It's essential to have regular communication with the program members to see if the scheme is adding value and how you can act as an organisation can make possible improvements.

Make your program 'opt-in'.

For your mentoring program to be successful, you need to ensure that every mentor and mentee wants to be a part of the program. Participants should be excited to join, this is particularly important for diversity programs, as members are listening and trying to understand individuals with substantially different perspectives. For this specific type of program, you'll want to have participants that truly care about helping others and the impact they can create through the mentoring program.

Quality over quantity.

Although it might seem tempting to enrol everyone who qualifies, this is never the best idea. You need to keep enthusiasm high as establishing a bad mentoring relationship is more detrimental than having no mentoring relationship at all, especially when dealing with delicate diversity issues. You can combat disappointment by creating a waiting list and sending these individuals updates along the way, or ask your mentors if they are willing to take on additional mentees.

Identify the right mentors.

Having mentors and mentees from the same diversity group is highly beneficial as it encourages empathy between the pair, however, cross-group relationships allow for a greater understanding to be made which is advantageous for the organisation as a whole. Before selecting mentors you need to identify and think about what your organisation needs, either way, you want to help mentors and mentees feel supported whilst fostering a learning culture.

HOW TO MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR PROGRAM.

There are various ways to track the success of a mentoring program, although, some metrics are dependant on the company itself and the type of mentoring program being utilised.

Engagement Metrics.

  1. The active number of mentoring relationships
  2. The number of sign-ups
  3. How many mentoring sessions take place
  4. Hours of mentoring undertaken
  5. The number of mentoring meetings

Progress Metrics.

  1. Feedback from employees
  2. The number of goals set
  3. The number of goals achieved

Company Metrics.

  1. The level of employee engagement
  2. Satisfaction of employees
  3. Improved retention rates
  4. Improved performance
  5. Number of company goals met

ABOUT PUSHFAR.

PushFar is the world's leading mentoring and career progression platform, helping thousands of individuals and organisations across the globe. Our cloud-based platform is the perfect solution for implementing a mentoring program within your company to meet organisational and employee goals. Our platform enables you to build highly effective, customisable and scalable mentoring programs for your team members. Our data-driven algorithm, easy-to-use platform, and efficient features create a truly seamless experience.