Mentoring has received a great deal of attention recently as a strategy to meet a variety of workforce challenges. The Institute’s Demographic Research recommends mentoring as an important tool for retention, professional development, and succession planning for the industry.  

For employers, mentoring provides the opportunity to tap into their own pool of experienced professionals to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills, ethics, and professionalism to less experienced workers. While some employers have established formal mentoring programs, many others are looking for support.

In addition, many members have self-identified as mentors and mentees and are ready to engage in informal mentoring relationships –but don’t know where to start.

In 2013, the CIP Society put together a task force composed of members of the HR community and other stakeholders to discuss mentoring and how we can help our industry create more and better mentoring relationships. It was determined that the Society could play a role in providing education and resources – ‘best practices’ if you will – that would enable the industry to take full advantage of what mentoring can offer.

The culmination of the work with the task force is a new resource website, mentoring ADVANTAGE, organized for three specific audiences: mentees, mentors and organizations. The site features valuable information and tools (including a program set-up checklist and goal-setting exercise) to help members establish new mentoring relationships and improve existing ones. The “Experience Speaks” section of the site provides an opportunity for members to share and learn about mentoring in action – the successes and setbacks.

While at this time it is not the Society’s intent to offer a matching system for the industry, we are confident that the material developed and made available on the site will help mentors and mentees engage in effective mentoring relationships.

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