Your employees’ mentoring experience can weigh heavily in determining whether your firm is a great place for them to work or not.
I recently took Zweig Group’s Best Firms To Work For employee survey, which includes some great questions about firm mentoring programs. It reminded me that mentoring is important, and the employees’ experience with it can weigh heavily on determining if your firm is a great place to work or not. As a branch manager who has been leading staff in some capacity for about 10 years, I’ve learned some lessons over the years about mentoring.
To mentor is to advise or train someone to grow their skills. The role of the mentor, the benefits of the relationship, and the expectations all need to be customized to each individual or scenario. Ask: What’s the end goal?
Everyone needs a mentor on their first day of starting a job. Whether it be fresh-from-college engineer-in-training or an experienced P.E. who has moved over from another firm, mentoring is required. The new hire with years of experience likely doesn’t need as much mentorship for technical skill set functions, but someone needs to onboard them into the systems, processes, and culture of the firm.
But more often, when I think of mentoring, I gravitate toward the mentoring of a less experienced engineer. Most of the new hires at our firm come right out of college. They may have worked a summer internship, but other than that they have hardly any experience working in a professional environment.
Coming from a firm with about 70 employees spread across six offices, here’s my recommended approach to mentoring:
- Have a plan. Especially if you are a smaller firm, onboarding an entry-level team member can result in failure if there’s no mentor to take the lead.
- The branch manager assigns a team leader, project manager or themselves to be the go-to for the new team member.
- Alternately, if that becomes a time burden, consider a team approach, where multiple members of the team all work together to provide mentorship. Mentorship responsibilities can rotate to alleviate time spent teaching and keep day-to-day project work in good standing.
- Be willing to adapt, because the mentor and the mentee may not be a good fit for each other. You never know who the mentee is going to relate to and not all teaching styles work for those learning.
The personality of the person being mentored could be that they do the work, do what they are taught and dial in those processes to become successful at that niche of work. The more outgoing mentees go above and beyond to develop relationships with others. These individuals tend to expand their horizons faster and become more well-rounded.
We have experienced scenarios where the mentee naturally leans toward one person for mentorship, or alternatively the mentee gets exposure to many mentors over various types of projects. As an example of the latter, we had an entry-level engineer who wanted to move around the first couple of years of their career. They started in our Portland office for six months, moved to our Bend office for six months, and landed in our Missoula office. This was all planned out and part of the employment offer letter. This engineer got exposure to all kinds of different projects, styles, and personalities. It worked magnificently because it fit their personality and personal goals.
Our firm operates with full integration between all offices, and we encourage staff to travel to visit and spend time working with other offices.
Lastly, be prepared to individualize your mentorship plan. Never get frustrated with the person being mentored because it’s probably not their fault things aren’t going well.
Scott Ratterman, P.E., is group director at Eclipse Engineering’s Portland office. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
