If you have a mentor, you will likely reap the rewards throughout your career. Mentors, often those in positions of leadership with many years of experience, act as capacity builders and trusted advisors on specific work-related issues or on career decisions, some of which may impact even larger life paths. Mentoring can be invaluable for mentees who may be at early or midpoints in their careers and for those who want to accelerate their progress to their next levels.
The research is positive: 97% of those with a mentor say mentoring is valuable1. Mentees are promoted five times more often than those without mentors, and mentors themselves are six times more likely to be promoted2. Mentoring supports career development, psychosocial support, interpersonal skills, and networking skills,3 and has been positively related to increased employee commitment and decreased turnover rates4.
A good mentor facilitates reflective thinking, serves as a role model for growth and learning, and helps the mentee set goals and develop numerous skills needed to be successful in their career. The mentee can improve their ability to resolve challenges and benefit from reaching their goals through accountability. Mentors themselves also benefit through the satisfaction of helping a less-experienced employee build skills and knowledge. And if a mentor has been mentored at some point in their career, they are able to pay forward the positive experiences they had as a mentee.
Here in Hawaiʻi, as we build a more sustainable economy, we are embracing innovation and technology transformation as a way to support the diversification of the state. A crucial aspect of this is developing a talent pipeline of skilled workers, some of whom have never worked in tech before. For these new employees, mentorship will be vital.
Currently, Pacxa is spearheading a new Workforce Development Program to help get Hawaiʻi’s economy back on track. Our program is paid, work-based training that provides mentoring, real-world work experience, opportunities to obtain IT industry certifications, and career services.
In less than a year, our Workforce Development Program helped four participants jump-start their IT careers. Thanks to successful training and mentoring, they are equipped to excel in their new roles. These candidates came from various backgrounds, having worked previously in non-IT occupations or are recent college graduates with limited professional experience. We believe strongly in mentoring as a component of workforce development because it works, and we see its potential for making a difference for our state and our people.
We invite Hawai‘i’s business community to join us in preparing a ready and capable technology workforce, and to develop our future leaders for the workplace challenges that lie ahead. Pacxa is looking for partners who want to help build opportunities for current and future generations to work and live well in Hawai‘i. Interested parties can email us at [email protected].
- National Mentoring Day Facts and FAQ. Retrieved from Facts and FAQ | National Mentoring Day.
- Quast, L. (2011.) How Becoming a Mentor Can Boost Your Career. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2011/10/31/how-becoming-a-mentor-can-boost-your-career/?sh=583f9bda5f57
- Neely, A. R., Cotton, J., & Neely, A. D. (2017). E-mentoring: A Model and Review of the Literature. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(3), 220-242. Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol9/iss3/3
- Giacumo, L.A., Chen, J. Seguinot-Cruz, A. (2020). Evidence on the Use of Mentoring Programs and Practices to Support Workplace Learning: A Systematic Multiple-Studies Review. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 33(3), 259-303. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.eres.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/piq.21324