The knowledge, skills, creativity and ambition of our people is what drives our business forward, but we recognise that our industry can be difficult to access and stressful to work in at times.
We thought about this, looked around us, and saw that we had a wealth of experience and lots of great personalities across the Group and that this could be very inspiring for those looking up or across at it, but more importantly, that sharing this experience might really make the difference to someone.
We set up a mentoring scheme outside of the formal appraisal and management processes to help our people to develop trustful relationships with their colleagues. We firmly believe that being able to speak about ideas and seek support and opinion in an informal – and confidential – way helps our people develop and broadens their horizons through shared experiences.
We pair our mentees with a mentor in a more senior role from a different team (and we give our mentors a mentor too) so that we can give a helping hand to build relationships across the Group and nurture our positive environment of trust and encouragement.
We know that it’s essential to champion our people, and our mentees are encouraged to look at areas of personal development they seek to improve and identify professional challenges they wish to overcome. Our mentors are tasked with encouraging and supporting the personal and professional growth of their mentees so that they can equip themselves to meet challenges head-on and celebrate the victories – big and small – in their career.
We recognise that mentoring relationships work best when they move beyond the directive approach of a senior colleague ‘telling it how it is’. As such, our mentors and mentees are encouraged to listen, talk and share perspectives equally so that each can learn from the other. An effective mentoring relationship is a real learning opportunity for both parties, and we encourage sharing knowledge across generations, between roles and irrespective of specialism.
