Mentorship: the key solution for people development
This case study dates back to 2012. It was written by Carmen Nicula in collaboration with Cristina Nicule. In 2012, Carmen Nicula was the Human Resources Director at FrieslandCampina Romania. The case study first appeared in the HR Manager Magazine.
The article written based on the case study was revised and updated in 2022.
FrieslandCampina Romania
- FrieslandCampina’s employee development strategy for the coming years involved a strong focus on on-the-job, applied learning methods to achieve a quick and impactful result. At the same time, as in other companies, we faced shrinking employee development budgets amid the global economic crisis.
- Based on the internal organizational analyses, we realized that there were two categories of employees that were extremely important to the company:
- People with significant experience in their professional field and/or in management, whose knowledge and know-how represented a “gold mine”. They, more or less, transferred know-how to the less experienced people, but many times this transfer process was an important and non-urgent task, so it was postponed. Also, the transfer was more likely to take place between a direct manager and his subordinate than at the interdepartmental level.
- People with high potential, called HiPo (“high-potential”), who were constantly on the company’s radar in terms of developing and realizing their potential. Those in the HiPo category had already gone through various skills and knowledge development programs.
- The team had the experience of previous programs, run over about seven years in FrieslandCampina, which gave the advantage of knowing how the company worked, internal rules, and people and teams.
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Mentorship is more effective if it is carried out within an organized system or program.
In an organized context, the transfer really takes place because there is the ownership of the role of Mentor and HiPo, and at the end there is a set of performance evaluation criteria, plus clear planning of mentorship meetings. Outside this context, i.e. naturally, the only ones who are likely to achieve a transfer of know-how are line managers to their subordinates. But even in such situations, planning within a program helps as it allows information to be systematized, extracted, and passed on, facilitating the completion of the process.
In interdepartmental mentorship (the Mentor is from one department, the HiPo from another), the success rate of handover is very low if done naturally. There can be objective and subjective disincentives to this natural handover, and an organized program helps overcome them. For example, the Mentor’s busy schedule, the HiPo’s lack of courage, subjective perceptions of a mentor’s availability, strained relations with the direct manager, which would become even more strained in the event of mentoring with someone else.
A mentorship scheme or program can run in annual or bi-annual editions of 4-6 months (we recommend that the number of HiPo being mentored by one person in parallel should be a maximum of 2).
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The effectiveness of the method makes mentorship a key solution of employee development: affordable, fast, with tangible results. The implementation investments of such a program are significantly lower than those of training programs. Development is achieved quickly and is directly proportional to the credibility of the mentors in the eyes of their mentees. Therefore, the personal skills and qualities of a Mentor are prerequisites for successful transfer: honesty (in the desire to help others, to share both successes and mistakes from one’s experience), integrity, the ability to inspire and motivate, the ability to communicate clearly, concisely, and relevantly, the ability to set specific and measurable goals, modesty, passion, and enthusiasm for one’s work.
Mentors are nominated by the organization (employees) and those with the most nominations are asked if they want to join the project (the principle of “free will” is very important in mentoring). Then, each HiPo chooses their mentor according to what development goal they have set and according to their own wishes.
- Leverage existing expertise and knowledge in the company.
- Ensure a know-how transfer from the Mentor to the HiPo.
- Develop and/or strengthen mentorship skills.
- Develop high potential individuals.
- Promote the program within the organization.
- Establish the Mentor and the HiPo groups (9 mentors and 12 HiPos involved in the program).
- Allocate mentors and HiPos participating in the program.
- Initial training workshop for mentors. In a half-day workshop, concepts related to mentoring and common confusions with coaching skills or even with the coaching profession were clarified; skills and personal characteristics needed by a Mentor were discussed; simulations for the first meeting were made; agendas, the structure of mentorship meetings, possible obstacles were discussed.
- Organize individual and group coaching sessions during the mentorship with mentors.
- Final workshop to analyze and share results.
12 HiPo met their development objectives in 3 categories (objectives set and agreed with their direct manager): develop interpersonal and leadership skills, gain technical and expert knowledge, help run the complex projects they were responsible for.
The percentage of achievement of these objectives was variable (on average: 75%). Some objectives were still being worked on because their complexity was much higher than the 2 months of mentorship provided (6 HiPo achieved 100% of their objectives, 4 between 60%-70%, and 2 below 50%).
Example of objectives met through mentoring:
- HiPo: newly hired in FrieslandCampina Romania, 29 years old, with a position that would involve collaboration with all other departments in the company and even collaborations between factories in different countries
- Mentor: Factory Manager
- Objective: to develop persuasion and interpersonal skills with people at different hierarchical levels in other departments
- Achievement: the objective was achieved through the transfer of experience from Mentor to HiPo, the latter actually applying all the advice and examples he received in a concrete, interdepartmental project, where he needed to gain credibility (being a new employee and young), engage people and keep them engaged
6 out of the 9 mentors were pointed out as Active Mentors at the end of the program and promoted in the organization after the end of the program.
The Active Mentor was considered to be the Mentor who, during the program, succeeded in achieving a quality transfer process: the number of mentoring meetings held, evaluation by the HiPo, self-evaluation, degree of achievement of the proposed development objective for the mentee.
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HiPo was not the only category of employees who could benefit from mentorship. In the case of FrieslandCampina Romania, HiPo was the category we chose for the pilot. From the final analysis with all the stakeholders involved in the program, we determined that in the following editions any employee could benefit from mentorship. People from any level or area of the organization could take part in the mentorship program, as long as there was a mentor in the mentorship session willing to accept mentees. The transfer targeted a relevant development objective (the objective was set by the mentee together with the direct manager and was based on the assessments made in the company through the other existing systems, in our case: the Performance Management System and the Talent Management System).
If such a program was also linked to other systems in the organization, Performance Management System and Talent Management System, then the selection of the learners would be easier.
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The principle of freedom of decision was most useful in setting the participating groups, choosing the content to be transferred, and determining the type of mentoring: intra- or inter-departmental. We found it extremely useful that mentors and mentees were free to choose whether to take on the responsibility of entering such a program where availability and personal openness mattered much more than in classic development programs.
Mentors also needed to be involved in choosing the mentees with whom they would work, as perceptions of mutual affinity – even if subjective – could play a key role in the success or failure of mentorship. Each Mentor would have his or her own criteria for deciding whether or not to become a mentor, criteria which did not even matter if they were objective or subjective – what mattered was that the subsequent involvement of both was sincere.
When the process of setting the groups of participants and matching mentors with mentees was realized with everyone’s involvement and in a transparent way, then the chances of success increased significantly.
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The advantages of using external consultants in such a process were linked to the increased likelihood of a successful transfer. Consultants in the area of soft skills development came into such a process with know-how about mentoring techniques and models, which was passed on to mentors. They provided expert support through coaching, helped mentors when they encountered an obstacle or needed confirmation.
In the case of our program, group coaching, managed by consultants, allowed the sharing of different mentoring experiences and facilitated valuable reflections on the process. It may seem minor, but one of the advantages of an external expert is the external perspective: participants’ openness can be greater during the individual coaching sessions and, by collaborating with external consultants, participants can put positive pressure on the achievement of the objectives.