Can Companies Use Mentoring to Increase Employee Retention? Essay

All businesses, from an entrepreneurial start up to an established company, need mentoring. The entrepreneurs of those companies require mentoring as well. A mentor can help a fellow peer develop important business skills, support them in making important career and life decisions and put them in touch with needed network contacts. The purpose of my report is to analyze the results of putting a mentoring program in place in a company and why it can reap rewards for the employees and the organization. The key variable that I will be focusing on is employee retention since â€Å"SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, estimated that it costs $3,500.00 to replace one $8.00 per hour employee when all costs — recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training, reduced productivity, et cetera, were considered† (Blake 2006). Imagine the cost to the company when considering a $40,000 a year corporate employee! (DegreeSearch.org) Mentoring can be an influential tool in familiarizing employees to an organization’s culture and help them grow in their jobs. It can be tremendously valuable to have someone who has your best interests at heart and can explain the facts of your corporate culture and offer treasured advice. Informal mentoring has been going on continually, but companies are increasingly identifying that formal mentoring programs can provide momentous benefits for both the employee and the organization. Positive benefits include is statistical growth in employee retention, growth and satisfaction. The focus of my analysis was the increase in employee retention vs. Articles: Blake, Rose. Employee Retention: What Employee Turnover Really Costs Your Company. WebProNews. July 24, 2006. Bridgeford, Lydell. Mentoring Programs Still Have a Place in the 21st Century. Employee Benefit News, August 1, 2007 Corporate Leadership Council. (2005). Mentoring: From Theory to Action. Corporate Leadership Council, 18. DegreeSearch.org (2011), Mentors Make a Difference Infographic. Dunnett, R. (2012). Mentoring matters. Director (00123242), 65(6), 50-53. LESTER, P. B., HANNAH, S. T., HARMS, P. D., VOGELGESANG, G. R., & AVOLIO, B. J. (2011). Mentoring Impact on Leader Efficacy Development: A Field Experiment. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 10(3), 409-429. Miloff, M., & Zachary, L. J. (2012). Mentoring to Develop Strategic Leaders. T+D, 66(4), 102-104. Offstein, E. H., Shah, A. J., & Gnyawali, D. R. (2011). Effects of CEO-BOD Mentoring on Firm Competitive Behavior. Review Of Business, 32(1), 75-88.