Please refer to the Best Practices: Mentoring [120 KB] publication for detailed information on mentoring.
Mentoring is usually a formal or informal relationship between two people-a senior mentor (usually outside the protégé's chain of supervision) and a junior protégé. Mentoring has been identified as an important influence in professional development in both the public and private sector. The war for talent is creating challenges within organization not only to recruit new talent, but to retain talent. Benefits of mentoring include increased employee performance, retention, commitment to the organization, and knowledge sharing.
Within the Federal Government, mentoring is often a component in developmental programs like the Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program (SESCDP), Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) Program, or the USDA Graduate School Executive Leadership Program (ELP). Many agencies run formal stand-alone mentoring programs to enhance career and interpersonal development. Formal mentoring programs have structure, oversight, and clear and specific organizational goals. Agencies implement formal mentoring programs for different purposes. Some of these purposes include:
Informal mentoring is another option for employees to enter into a mentor/protégé relationship. An informal mentoring partnership has less structure and can occur at any time in one's career. The relationship is usually initiated by the mentor or protégé. Here are some of the following ways an informal mentoring relationship can be initiated:
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) contacted various Federal agencies and private sector organizations with established mentoring programs. Listed below are some of the effective and proven practices used in developing a mentoring program:
Listed below are some of the effective and proven practices used in implementing a mentoring program: