Matching Mentors April 23, 2008 The benefits of mentoring are manifold—mentees gain a trusty adviser, mentors a chance to see how well they know their stuff by teaching it to another. The result is knowledge transfer that benefits the whole organization. The trouble is it’s sometimes hard matching mentees with the right mentors. For Xerox, a new program is meeting that need.
By Margery Weinstein
Facilitating career development for diversity and affinity groups is no easy thing. Mentoring is a good solution, but mentor recruitment and mentor-mentee matching can be too unwieldy and time-consuming to implement in a large company. At Xerox, an initiative launched by an employee caucus group known as The Women's Alliance (TWA) is not only working for its members but is also being adopted by other caucus groups.
TWA is using an electronic self-service mentor-matching program to automate the process. The software is Web-based, administration-light, and low-cost enough to be covered by modest member dues. Prospective mentors and mentees maintain profiles of their areas of expertise and desired areas of development and then search for matches based on these or other parameters in the profile.
Since the program was fully implemented 10 months ago, it has created 62 mentorships, with more added on a regular basis. Word has spread throughout Xerox, and recently the company's Asians Coming Together caucus started using the same software. There appears to be no end in sight to this mentoring momentum. Gay/lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, Hispanic, and black women's leadership groups also have expressed interest.
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