Business benefits to your practice
Mentoring programmes play an important part in improving expertise and capacity within the profession. They help to build leadership qualities in both the mentors and mentees. Offering a Mentoring Programme can help to retain staff and improve return to work rates, as individuals feel supported in their career development.
A mentoring programme can bring a number of benefits. A happy, productive staff team will help to improve your bottom line. It will improve confidence and help develop staff, from students through to retirement. It can help to stimulate professional aspirations of people from different backgrounds and help address barriers to career progression.
Improved employee engagement can lead to better-motivated workforces who are more productive; this leads to improved business outcomes. Staff that are supported to develop their careers in this way are more likely to be satisfied with their employment situation and will actively seek ways to improve their career progression. They are more likely to resolve challenges and set more ambitious objectives and goals for themselves. Mentoring programmes also help employees with their CPD as they gain better communication, leadership and evaluation skills.
Mentoring programme guidance
There are many challenges to managing a mentoring programme. The guidance has been developed to provide Mentor Programme Coordinators with the tools to deliver a successful programme. The guidance includes the fundamental elements of a programme along with step-by-step guides for delivery.
It requires four easy steps:
- Design and Planning
- Programme Management and Coordination
- Delivery
- Evaluation and Closure
Download our overview and step-by-step guidance documents to set up your formal, in-practice mentoring programme.
Speed Mentoring
Speed Mentoring is an effective method of mentoring, based on the speed-dating concept. The format matches practitioners who could benefit from sharing their knowledge, experience or connections. It allows for quick-fire exchange of ideas about professional development or business needs and targeted networking, with the potential to initiate an ongoing mentoring relationship. Mentees are specifically matched with their chosen mentors.
The RIBA run a Speed Mentoring event at Guerrilla Tactics, the RIBA’s annual professional event for small to medium-sized practices.
Download our Speed Mentoring Toolkit guidance and supporting documents below.
Fluid Diversity Mentoring
This programme was developed by the RIBA’s Architects for Change Advisory Group (AfC) and the Construction Industry Council, to address the retention and development of talented practitioners from diverse backgrounds for management and leadership roles in the built environment.
Visit the Fluid Diversity Mentoring website for more information about the programme and how to apply to become a mentor or mentee.
Audio recordings of candid conversations between mentors and mentees can be found below and within the downloadable guidance. These help to illustrate the benefits and challenges of the mentoring relationship, sharing best practice, benefits of mentoring to the profession and society and the different types of mentoring.
Listen to some conversations between mentors and mentees
For information and support, download our full range of mentoring guidance documents below.
