A well-structured formal mentoring program helps to build loyalty among new employees, provides an opportunity for employees to test their skills and challenge themselves, and mentors could gain greater confidence and have a sense of greater job security and job satisfaction as well. Especially during the transitional period, whether it’s for a company or for individual person, mentoring could ease the uncertainty associated with change

Yang, Jing

English

DigitalCommons@ILR

Cornell University ILR School 
DigitalCommons@ILR 
Student Works ILR Collection 
Spring 2014 
What Forms of Mentoring Programs are Available at Other Big 
Companies? 
Jing Yang 
Cornell University 
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What Forms of Mentoring Programs are Available at Other Big Companies? 
Abstract 
A well-structured formal mentoring program helps to build loyalty among new employees, provides an 
opportunity for employees to test their skills and challenge themselves, and mentors could gain greater 
confidence and have a sense of greater job security and job satisfaction as well. Especially during the 
transitional period, whether it’s for a company or for individual person, mentoring could ease the 
uncertainty associated with change. 
Keywords 
human resources, mentoring, Fortune 50, learning, mentoring programs 
Comments 
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[insert date] from Cornell University, ILR School site: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/student/67 
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ILRHR 6640 
Case #3  
Jing Yang  
April 6, 2014 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
FINAL QUESTION 
What forms of mentoring programs are available at other big companies? And who are the sponsors 
and participants for these programs? 
INTRODUCTION 
A well-structured formal mentoring program helps to build loyalty among new employees, provides an 
opportunity for employees to test their skills and challenge themselves, and mentors could gain greater 
confidence and have a sense of greater job security and job satisfaction as well. 1 Especially during the 
transitional period, whether it’s for a company or for individual person, mentoring could ease the 
uncertainty associated with change.2 
LATEST TRENDS IN MENTORING PROGRAMS 
As millennials enter into workforce and are expected to be the next generation of leaders, companies 
are establishing innovative ways of mentoring this new cohort.  
1. Reverse Mentoring
Reverse mentoring is defined as the pairing of a younger, junior employee acting as mentor to share 
expertise with an older, senior colleague as the mentee.3 Senior employees could benefit from this 
nontraditional form of mentoring by getting to know new technology, latest professional trends as well 
as the new generation, and at the same time, younger workers are offered a window to the leadership 
roles of the organization, and are better prepared to take over the business once needed. Reverse 
mentoring is an innovative and cost-effective professional development tool that capitalizes on building 
bridges between generations.4  
Examples: 
Burson-Marsteller, DELL, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner, GE 
Procter & Gamble’s “Mentor Up” program pairs mid- or junior- level female managers with senior-level 
male executives, which significantly reduces turnover among female managers.5 
2. Group Mentoring
The company sets up a technology platform that allows employees to define mentoring in their own 
term. This is a less resource-intensive method which requires least amount of HR intervention, and can 
overcome physical constraint, and it’s particularly popular among telecom companies. 
Examples: 
AT&T: Leadership circles. Typically, three executives advise a group of nine to ten employees on an 
internal social networking platform, which has features such as community forums, document-sharing 
spaces, group polling, and calendars that announce events and mentor availability. 9 
BT: Dare2share. A social collaboration platform which allows employees to share their knowledge 
through short audio and video podcasts, RSS feeds, discussion threads, as well as traditional training 
documents to their peer colleagues.9 
3. Anonymous Mentoring
This method uses psychological testing and a background review to match mentees with trained mentors 
outside the organization or certified experts inside the organization. 9 The company finance the program, 
and the anonymity of the program provides participants with a safe environment to share their personal 
experience and it’s very flexible. This is an approach worth exploring.  
In all, these new programs are particularly created to satisfy millennials’ needs for mobility, collaboration 
and immediate feedback. But they could also be extended to other generations in the organization 
because all employees want to feel valued, empowered and engaged at work. 
KEY ELEMENTS IN CREATING A SUCCESSFUL REVERSE MENTORING PROGRAM 
1. Leadership support. Visible and sincere support from upper management team signals the significance
of the program, and encourages the commitment of participants. 
2. Matching process. Participants’ perceived input into the matching process are critical to the success
of a mentoring program.6 Source of input could include HR peoples’ personal knowledge of participants, 
interviews of participants, soliciting choice lists from participants, organizing mutual activities, and pair 
the subjective data with standardized assessment tools.  
3. Training and development. Training can assist participants in getting the relationship started, help
participants understand their roles and responsibilities, and enable both participants to manage their 
expectations.7 
4. Technology. The administration and implementation of a mentoring program, especially a large
volume one, needs an individual technology platform to constantly communicate information to 
participants, generate the most suitable mentor-mentee matches by housing and analyzing data, and 
also track, measure and demonstrate program success by running customized report.8 
5. The role of HR department. Typically, the HR department coordinates mentoring programs and
functions as program manager. This involves ensuring leadership support and resources needed, 
preparing written guidelines, sending out notices describing the program, facilitating the data gathering 
and initial pairings of mentors and mentees, and offering trainings. HR people should also be responsible 
for the evaluation procedure from the beginning, and if the individuals are not comfortable with one 
another or are not satisfied with the arrangement, HR should work as a mediator to adjust the pairing. 
CONCLUSION 
It is important for companies to evaluate developing goals for their employees in order before crafting 
a mentoring program. Both mentors and mentees should be actively involved into the whole process 
with senior leaders acting as key stakeholders and HR department as the administrator and 
coordinator. It’s also important to keep in mind that these programs should not violate 
nondiscrimination requirements by discouraging certain protected groups.10 
References 
1. Bloomberg, M. (2014). The role of mentoring. Physician Executive, 40(2), 88-90. 
2. Mazzuca Toops, L. (2014). Mentoring: Time to get personal. Property & Casualty 360, 118(3), 64-64. 
3. Marcinkus Murphy, W. (2012). Reverse mentoring at work: Fostering cross-generational learning and 
developing millennial leaders. Human Resource Management, 51(4), 549-573. doi:10.1002/hrm.21489 
4. Harvey, M., & Buckley, M. R. (2002). Assessing the “conventional wisdoms” of management for the 
21st century organization. Organizational Dynamics, 30, 368–378. 
5. Zielinski, D. (2000). Mentoring up. Training, 37(10), 136–141. 
6. Allen, T. D., Eby, L. T., & Lentz, E. (2006). Mentorship behaviors and mentorship quality associated with 
formal mentoring programs: Closing the gap between research and practice. Journal of Applied Psychology, 
91(3), 567-578. 
7. Parise, M. R., & Forret, M. L. (2008). Formal mentoring programs: The relationship of program design and 
support to mentors’ perceptions of benefits and costs. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72, 225–240. 
8. Corner, J. (2012). Tech-infused mentoring. T+d, 66(6), 50-53. 
9. Jeanne C. M. & Karie Willyerd (2010). Mentoring Millennials. HRR, May 2010. 
10. Customized Research, Human Resources Decision Support Network, Feb 2008 
 
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What Forms of Mentoring Programs are Available at Other Big Companies?

A well-structured formal mentoring program helps to build loyalty among new employees, provides an opportunity for employees to test their skills and challenge themselves, and mentors could gain greater confidence and have a sense of greater job security and job satisfaction as well. Especially during the transitional period, whether it’s for a company or for individual person, mentoring could ease the uncertainty associated with change.What_Forms_of_Mentoring_Programs_Are_Available_at_Other_Fortune_50_Companies.pdf: 690 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

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