Peopleconnexion Training is incredibly excited to have officially launched our 2022 Mentoring Matters program. Mentoring is a special program close to Peopleconnexion’s heart, inherited from our Founder/CEO, Kristine’s own passion for mentoring. As a mentor and career coach to many young female professionals, Kristine has dedicated her life’s work to professional development. In partnership with Principal Consultant, Training and Development, Gary Blair, Peopleconnexion’s mentoring program has been developed from their collective passion to make a difference every day in people’s lives through training and development. Gary brought his drive to continually inspire and empower individuals in to their skills, strengths, values and lives into the writing and developing of the program.
To kick off the program, Peopleconnexion Training ran an internal Pilot program, building eight mentoring relationships across the business, throughout the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Papua New Guinea offices. A key element which set our business up for success for cross-cultural mentoring relationships was having recently undertaken the Pilot program for our newly developed Cultural Intelligence program, which opened our capabilities for effective cross-cultural understanding and communication with each other.
The Mentoring Matters program consisted of 3×2-hour virtual introductory sessions which covered what mentoring is, the benefits of mentoring, traits of mentors/mentees, building rapport, goal setting and asking questions and listening. This then set up the eight mentoring relationships on their way to proceed with 1:1 mentoring sessions between the allocated mentors and mentees.
“This program was great as it gave us a framework and understanding of a mentor and mentee relationship, and presented an opportunity to reflect on how we can add value to our life by being or having a mentor”, one mentor said.
“It is clear that being involved in this program will inevitably unlock some of the potentials that we all have. It is also a great way to practice key skills such as accountability, commitment and time management”, one mentee said.
This month, we are thrilled to be kicking off Mentoring Matters in partnership with Papua New Guinea’s Business Coalition for Women, to motivate and guide aspiring female directors within Kumul Consolidated Holdings. This program will help Kumul reach their target of 30% of senior management and director roles being held by women, and be a significant step to advancing womens’ leadership in the nation.
Being in the tight market we are sitting in today, particularly in Australia; we are seeing firsthand how mentoring now, more than ever, can build up the talent pool and help address the labour shortages, particularly in the infrastructure market. Besides improving employee satisfaction and building skills and career development, mentoring has direct impacts on productivity, and can improve a company’s attraction and retention.
When speaking with our Divisional Manager for Engineering and Construction Recruitment, Richard Christer, he estimated that up to 90% of the senior vacancies he and the team recruit for, expect an element of training or mentorship, intended to give junior professionals the guidance and learnt knowledge these industries require. Having this ability means that companies can start investing in internationally gained experience and offshore talent, and subsequently mentor and train for local requirements.
While the market is in a talent shortage and desperate for talent to ‘hit the ground running’, with the demand of skilled resources rising with no view of steadying within the coming years, companies who can invest and manage in programmes such as mentoring will be on track to mitigating the impacts of the skills shortage on productivity and profitability.
Visit our Mentoring Matters website page or send us an enquiry to have a chat to find out how you can leverage your productivity and probability through mentoring today!