Business people spending time mentoring Birmingham’s young professionals are being rewarded by positive feedback.
An online e-survey carried out by Birmingham Future revealed that mentoring has improved their confidence, communication skills and ability to prioritise. And 92 per cent of respondents said they would recommend to other young professionals to join Future’s Mentoring Scheme.
The Birmingham Future Mentoring Scheme was launched in 2002 as an informal programme to match Future members with senior professionals from within Birmingham Forward. Since the launch, the scheme has significantly developed so that both mentors and mentees are sourced from Future’s membership. Currently almost a third of all the Birmingham Future membership is involved in one of the mentoring schemes run by the organisation.
The survey also revealed;
n Almost half of mentees said the regular mentoring sessions has been extremely useful in handling a specific issue with more than a quarter citing help with communications skills as a major benefit.
n For mentors, more than 50 per cent of respondents felt their greatest value to mentees was in building confidence and providing professional knowledge.
Clearly the survey revealed that regular meetings between mentee and mentor were highly valuable – three quarters revealed they met once a month.
For Lisa Clark, chairwoman of the Birmingham Future Mentoring Committee, the survey has also been useful in informing how the scheme can be improved and expanded.
“We now enjoy a significant proportion of our membership either mentoring or being mentored. It was important that we gauged what worked best in the scheme and what could be improved. The results of this survey show that each individual mentoring relationship is different with varying approaches and outcomes
“Mentoring can be a highly valuable and worthwhile experience for both parties. It is an opportunity for an exchange of views, for the mentee to learn from experienced professionals and provide a sounding board outside their own company environment.
For mentors it is also a positive way to hear about the issues and concerns that face young professionals in an ever changing commercial marketplace and can help develop skills such as delegation, time management and supervision.
“Birmingham Future is very committed to developing its mentoring work which is why we are pursuing the accreditation with the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.
This accreditation will help our scheme improve further and allow us to be benchmarked against other, similar schemes. This will be extremely valuable as we further extend our offer of mentoring to more young professionals.”
Birmingham Future has also launched a scheme in which members provide mentoring to students at Birmingham City University with the aim to provide advice and guidance to those considering careers in professional and financial services within the city.
