Dierdre Mullen got tired of the lukewarm success and acceptance of the company mentoring program, so she decided to make one change that made all the difference (part of an ongoing series).

We work hard at making new employees feel like part of the team. As a key to that effort, we started a mentoring program, in which new hires got teamed with nonmanager veterans who showed them the ropes.

A fairly standard approach – but one that wasn’t always effective. Sometimes, the pairing of rookie and vet just didn’t seem to click. In the worse cases, the rookie resigned early in the game.

That was a waste for everyone, so we had to make a change.

Wait a while

The idea for the type of change came when I noticed that after a couple of weeks on the job, new people seemed to find someone they had something in common with. Usually, the two became friendly.

Then why not build our mentor program around that?

That meant delaying the pairing up, but we tried it: New hires worked for a couple of weeks, and then they got to request a specific mentor. We told the rookies if they had a problem during that initial time, they could go to anyone for help.

The modified program worked wonders. We hardly ever lose anyone because of a bad mentoring matchup. And I know that several people who were having a tough time later managed to pull through because of having a well matched mentor.

(Dierdre Mullen, development director, Cozen O’Conner, Philadelphia)

Tags: mentor, mentoring, veterans