5.3 Provide mentoring for women to cultivate their talent and mentoring for men

Description of Best Practices

Create high-quality mentorship programs for women and men at different career levels with specific gender equality and diversity goals

Provide clear structure and dedicate sufficient resources including:

Clear targets and quality standards
One person in charge of coordinating the program, and acting as a point of contact for mentors and mentees
Mentors who are trained to be aware of and eliminate gender and diversity bias in supervision and who create a positive environment for both women and men, with clear instructions on benefits, targets, and roles, and establishing the relationship
Encourage diverse mentor-mentee relationships; in addition to same sex mentor-mentee relationships (e.g., women mentoring women or men mentoring men), strategically match men to mentor and help advance women, as well as female leaders to develop, support, and advance men to orient men early in their careers to respect women in positions of power
Constant evaluation, integrating feedback and suggestions from mentors, mentees, and their supervisors
Prioritize standardized selection and matching of mentors and mentees, integrating as many successful women from the company as possible, and providing a strong orientation framework for mentors and mentees (e.g., mentoring topics and boundaries, expected frequency, and format of meetings)

Challenges of Implementation

Senior staff may perceive their role as an additional burden

Senior managers or supervisors may be reluctant to assume a mentoring role for female employees

Powerful biases that are the exact reason that this match is critical for transforming individuals need to be overcome:

Female leaders may be uncomfortable and hesitant to mentor male colleagues
Men may not accept being mentored by a woman
Corporate culture and norms may be unsupportive of men and women establishing a mentoring relationship

What Success Looks Like

Transparent company-wide mentoring program is established with goals, tools, guidelines, and metrics to measure achievements

Mentoring relationships are sustainable as can be seen in numbers and frequency of contacts between mentors and mentees

Women ask actively for mentoring opportunities

Increased number of women who participated in mentoring are perceived as good performers and/or get promoted to next level

Training for mentors is expanded to include gender-equality and non-discriminatory practices

Mentoring candidates, mentors, and supervisors of mentees report high satisfaction with quality of mentoring and target achievement

Mentor becomes a sponsor of the candidate (see below)

Diverse mentor-mentee relationships are established

Male employees mentored by female leaders become male leaders and champions of equality, supporting transformation and cultivation of more equitable workplaces