Formal Workplace Mentoring: A Strategy for Engagement

Abstract

Leaders in traditional industries, such as rail, are becoming distressed as more Baby Boomers move into retirement and employee turnover increases. Moreover, these same organisations are contemplating how they can manage the transfer of substantial and highly valued tacit knowledge from their departing experts to younger or less experienced colleagues. The challenges are complex, not least because of the many variables existent within industry contexts. For leaders the key questions are how to recognise, engage and motivate longer-serving employees while developing the next generation in a business environment where structured and traditional forms of training are costly and less effective in meeting these development needs. In times of economic hardship, when training budgets are generally under scrutiny, managers look for more effective ways to train and develop their people.

This chapter explores the emergence of formal workplace mentoring as one human resource development strategy for dealing with the transfer of knowledge, and comments on the motivational benefits of using mentoring programs in situations where other forms of learning might be less effective. In particular, the chapter describes how research conducted in six Australian rail organisations during 2011–2013 identified a nine-step mentoring framework and industry Code of Mentoring Practice for rail organisations to use. However, the study highlighted a series of hidden dangers within mentoring concepts that can reverse employee engagement and warns managers to avoid dysfunctional mentoring arrangements.