Mentor/buddy For New Employees

I'm after some advice/info on setting up and running a mentor/buddy scheme to support new employees when they start - what should these mentors do/not do, who can they be, who can't they be, etc, and what skills/training do they need?

Hi,

I have worked for a call center for some time & they had developed a very effective mentoring/buddy system. After the completion of training the employee was placed as a buddy to a more experienced colleague. The role of the mentor was to help the new employee understand what to do in tight situations & to develop a general feel for the job. The new employee would generally buddy with the mentor for about 4-5 days. The first two days he/she would just listen to calls, on the third day they would have to discuss the call & the last two days they would take a few calls & then discuss.

The reason for this example is to state that if developing a mentoring program it's probably a good idea to buddy the new employee with someone not that superior to the person in concern. This would help in general bonding with the company & will boost fellowship. Also, making sure that the person mentoring the new employee takes him on as a fellow & not a burden [which is common] So probably it would be wise to choose the mentors carefully.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Sid

CiteHR Team Member

They should be employees with good people skills.
They should not be line manager
Fairly recent recruits are more likely to empathise with what the new employee is going through.
So someone who joined the year before might be appropriate.
The research into mentoring schemes suggests that informal schemes work at least as well, if not better, than formal schemes. (Clutterbuck is the expect on mentoring)
The benefit will come if there is a rapport between the pair. If not then questions will not be asked, people will be too busy and the relationship will not be of value.
Col
colbrown.co.uk

just curious...are employees that are chosen to be a mentor given some sort of extra pay or is it purely voluntarily?

A buddy/mentor is a fantastic idea... I too have mentioned that to my superior. My dept is trying to update training/etc...how did you implement that? Did you write a proposal? I too work in a call center environment.