Mentoring to support talent and succession planning

Tell us Hannah why Echo decided to launch a mentoring programme?

As part of our talent and succession review in 2023, we identified employees who we believe are talent of the future who should form part of our succession plan for senior roles. Some of these employees had already been through ACE, our management development programme launched in 2022. We believe that a mentor will provide them all with an opportunity to learn from their shared experience, it could support career planning, providing general guidance to support the setting or achieving of goals and enable problem solving.

So how did you choose and recruit your mentors?

Mentoring is about being a role model, someone who has already ‘been there’, and has real experience of the issues that the mentees may face. A mentor often has connections to open doors for the mentee and challenge their personal development to help them achieve their personal and career goals.

When deciding on our mentors, we looked for people across our Group who model the behaviours of a respected leader, can provide a safe environment for a mentee to discuss ideas with and have a track record of being an advocate for supporting and championing their team.

When we approached our desired mentors they were all more than happy to get involved and were excited to see who they would be matched with!

How are you matching mentees and mentors?

We've asked our mentees and mentors to complete a profile on what are they hoping to get out of the mentorship.

For our mentees, we particularly wanted to know what the biggest challenge is that they are looking to overcome and where do they see themselves in 2 years’ time.

For our mentors, we were keen to understand their area of expertise and their strengths that they believe they can offer a mentee.

We do know that not all partnerships work, and as this is a new scheme, we may not get things right first time round. We have regular feedback sessions scheduled where we are inviting both mentees and mentors to share their experiences with us and if something isn’t quite right, we can work together to resolve it so the programme is a success for all.

Talking of success, what does this look like for the programme and what advice would you give other businesses in getting a programme off the ground?

At the end of the 12 months, we're hoping to see improved retention rates across our business, and particularly within our mentorship pool. We'd also love to see new opportunities for our mentees (projects, secondments, roles) within 24 months.

There are a couple of important factors which we would advise anyone who is looking to get a programme off the ground to consider:

1. Business buy-in – your mentoring programme should form part of your overall people strategy and you’ll need your key stakeholders buy in from the start.
2. Perfect partnership – the matching process is the most important part of the process to ensure success. It takes time to nurture the relationship and it’s important from the start everyone understands the expectations.

We can't wait to see how this new programme progresses and the value it brings for the mentees and mentors involved!