How did you celebrate National Mentoring Day on 27th October 2022?
Asks Andrew Penker Chartered FCIPD, Founder of xsectormentor.com
- The majority (57%) of the world’s employees are not engaged and 19% are miserable.
- Globally, only 9% of employees are thriving and engaged.
- Gallup’s ‘State of the Global Workplace’ Report 2022
What can we do?
Organisations need to engage the whole person, not just the worker. That means, we need to recognise that whilst balance is essential, the ability to compartmentalise work and life is challenging and difficult. In a Gallup study in Germany, 51% of actively disengaged workers said job stress caused them to behave poorly with loved ones.
To understand how we can help workers thrive, we need to consider the drivers of engagement.
What drives Employee Engagement?
People want purpose and meaning from their work, and want to be known for what makes them unique.
Who drives Employee Engagement?
People want relationships, particularly with an emphasis on coaching and mentoring.
How can employees become engaged?
Ongoing conversations, purpose, development, and a focus on strengths.
How to have a good day?
I participated in a webinar run by HBR and Caroline Webb (Author of How to have a good day?).
Front and centre, especially with topics such as Quiet Quitting, is the disengagement of workers.
The Cure?
Conversations at work. Conversations that are well structured, supportive and challenging, open and direct. Conversations that are respectful, enabled by effective listening, and that fundamentally provide workers with care, space, and time.
Coaching or Mentoring?
I am less restricted by a label and believe that to be really effective, mentors and coaches need to be trained professionals with skills to have powerful conversations and measurable outcomes (don’t be tricked into ‘three clicks and be a mentor’ mentor programmes as otherwise next week you might become a rocket scientist). My preference however is actually to have a mentor who is a professional rather than a professional coach, as I believe this makes mentoring more accessible to people regardless of their background, and makes it more affordable for SMEs, NfPs, Public sector, and charities who don’t have the same budgets to invest but for whom mentoring could have personal, professional and business improvements.
Celebrate the recent National Mentoring Day by setting up a company mentor programme – For Free!
As a proud contributor to Hr NETWORK and part of the Hr MARKET, XSectorMentor wants to give your company the opportunity to set up an in-company mentor programme for free using our programme platform for 3 months (from 1 November 2022 until 30 April 2023).
Request a demo by visiting: xsectormentor.com and talk to me about our affordable fixed pricing model, the way we’ll train mentors in your company, how our psychometrics enable effective communications, and about how we were designed ‘by companies, for companies’ to make running a mentor programme that will supercharge your conversations at work, and make engaging (and retaining) your workers much easier!
