A successful workplace is fueled by its employees’ work and their professional growth with mentorship programs and workshops. But if you don’t know how effective this effort your company is putting into your employees is, this growth can soon prove to be a sinking ship.
Tracking the professional progress of mentees is essential to see how successful mentorship programs are and if they are benefitting participants sufficiently. Such measurement gives mentors an idea about where mentorship programs are lacking and the modifications they can integrate for higher employee retention and satisfaction.
Apart from this, measuring professional growth can show employees the gaps in their understanding, and they can work on required areas for faster growth. So, here are a few tips on how to track your mentee’s professional growth for a comprehensive idea of their progress.
Let’s dive right into it!
1. Setting Clear Goals and Expectations
Only about 25% of employees believe that they have benefitted from employee training programs. A significant reason for the failure of mentoring programs in the workplace is the lack of a clear goal at the beginning of the mentoring relationship.
If you thinking about how to track your mentee’s professional growth, the SMART and OKRs methods of measuring professional growth are concise ways of setting goals for mentoring programs. SMART stands for ‘Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound’ to help mentees set realistic goals they can achieve in a specified period.
OKRs simply refer to the Objectives that you want to achieve with your mentorship programs, and the Key Results show the measurable outcomes to check the progress of the objectives you want to achieve and show if the mentorship program encourages continuous learning among employees.
Regularly checking on your mentee’s professional growth in the workplace helps in making changes so mentees progress better and can align the mentoring program with their changing aspirations.
2. Utilizing Feedback Systems
96% of employees think that regular feedback is important, so utilizing it for mentoring sessions can only drive employee engagement in the process. Consistent feedback shows mentors where mentees are struggling, which can encourage them to modify and upgrade them.
Mentors get better details about their mentees when they get feedback after every session, and they can resolve their issues faster. Mentors can consider talking about the improvements and areas of improvement for mentees, which does not completely demotivate them.
If you are confused about how to track your mentee’s professional growth, consider the 360-degree feedback system to seek feedback from peers and supervisors to check on mentee development for continuous improvement in mentorship programs.
Also Read: What Is an Employee Engagement Score & What Does a Good Score Look Like?
3. Implementing Mentor Tracking Systems
Using comprehensive mentor-tracking platforms helps you track the goals of each mentee so they set milestones regularly for better performance. Studies show that employees with a set of plans are 3.6 times more likely to exhibit an enhanced commitment towards the company.
These tracking platforms offer concrete key performance indicators (KPIs) like mentee satisfaction scores, mentee skill development percentages, learning scores, and employee turnover rates.
If you are wondering how do you measure success as a mentee, consider analytics and reports that you get on these platforms to identify areas requiring improvement so mentors can work at addressing these gaps and covering them.
Share these reports with the employees and have an open discussion with them about their progress. Such close talks can bring up concerns between mentors and mentees and encourage employees to trust the company to prioritize their issues and find a solution for high performance in the workplace.
4. Conducting Regular One-on-One Meetings
When mentees are mentored in large numbers, they do not receive detailed help from their mentors. This can create gaps in the learning process and make mentees feel lost because they have no idea about their progress, and they may feel lost.
One-on-one meetings with mentees can help mentors get clarity about various things to help them more closely. Schedule meetings with employees so they choose a time they are comfortable talking about their issues and there is better communication.
At such meetings, mentors can bring up progress reports, challenges, and the steps they need to follow to overcome these obstacles. Approximately 70.4% of one-on-one meetings are held to understand and eliminate roadblocks because the mentors have more time to listen to problems and solve them.
If you are confused about how to track your mentee’s growth, one-on-one meetings are the solution. Mentors can give undivided attention to each mentee, promoting deep connections with each of them. Such deep relationships allow mentees to speak freely about their issues because there is increased trust between them and the mentors.
Mentors listen to their problems actively and strive to solve them and this increases the chances of mentees talking about their issues openly. Companies find solutions to problems faster and they progress towards success steadily.
Also Read: Why Assessing Employee Morale and Engagement Matters?
5. Monitoring Professional Development Activities
The role of mentees in professional growth is crucial, and providing them with reskilling and upskilling opportunities helps with this development. 56% of companies report improved employee retention with formal education initiatives, showing how crucial it is to track participation in initiatives like online courses and training sessions.
Want to know how to track your mentee’s professional growth? You can do that by measuring improvement in specific skills and competencies during these courses. Check how well or poorly each participant is reacting to the training programs your company provides.
Such demographics show you where some mentees are struggling, and you can schedule a personal face-to-face meeting with them for improvement. If you think a mentee is not benefitting from a particular course, consider switching courses or understanding their issues and implementing steps to resolve their concerns.
6. Reviewing and Reflecting
Reviewing and reflecting on mentorship programs can help check if the undertaking met set expectations and goals. But tracing this can be a little difficult without a proper reviewing system, so you can implement SWOT analysis in such situations. SWOT stands for the mentee’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
A study indicates that only around 29% of employees are “very satisfied” with their current career advancements, showing how important it is to understand the pain points of employee training for better satisfaction rates.
Get a clear understanding of how to track your mentee’s career growth and provide your employees with the same clarity. Trace the major achievements of your mentees and highlight the areas for growth so there is a clear understanding of the mentorship progress on the mentee’s side.
Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Employee Journey Mapping
7. Reporting and Celebrating Successes
Get a detailed view of the progress each employee makes, and be sure to give that data to the leaders and stakeholders of your organization. It gives them a clear view of the work that employees are putting in, and they can identify how they can work better to improve working conditions for employees.
When the company celebrates the mentee’s accomplishments, they feel motivated to work with better focus and dedication. This boosts employee morale and brings higher profits to the company because they produce high-quality work with better dedication.
Around two-thirds of employees are disengaged at work and driving this disengaged crowd towards the company’s betterment is crucial for overall brand growth. If you want success with the mentorship program, you need to understand what is a growth mindset for a mentee and make sure that this idea aligns with the company’s ideologies.
Creating steady growth channels for mentees helps you improve employee experience with new changes so their personal and company goals are on the same page and they get maximum advantages of the company’s initiatives.
Also Read: How to Identify Learning Needs in Your Workplace?
Conclusion
Today, around 84% of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. offer mentorship programs for their employees but tracking the progress of this initiative shows if it is helping your company’s ROI. Use growth tracking software for your mentee’s career growth in the workplace because they offer comprehensive reports and analytics about how well they are doing and their pain points.
If you want to know how to track your mentee’s growth, the above steps can help you out. By using these steps, you can ensure the effective growth of your mentees with personal attention to each one’s journey.
A good idea to invest in a mentorship program and software that aligns with your company’s goals for maximum benefits. Personalized attention is the key to successful mentoring and
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is professional growth and its importance?
Professional growth is the steady development of an individual in their workspace with upskilling and reskilling programs and generating quality work. Steady professional growth improves confidence among mentees and boosts the employability of employees. Tracking your mentee’s progress can help you see if mentees are profiting from their mentor’s help and make sure they are satisfied with their growth.
2. How can mentors help mentees track growth?
Mentors can help mentees by putting things into perspective for them, giving mentees a clear view of their goals, and teaching how do you measure success as a mentee. Mentors can consider incorporating feedback for continuous improvement so they see gaps and improve regularly.
3. What makes a mentorship program successful?
Having a clear idea about how to track your mentee’s professional growth can make your mentorship programs successful because you know how to help your mentees grow faster and better.
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