For us, April marks the end of the very first mentoring program by mindit.io – “Mind your Growth”. It was a great experience for our community, that not only provided guidance and support for mentees but also nurtured the personal and professional growth of every single participant.
A few words from our mentees and mentors:
”I am very happy with the mentoring program; it has brought me a lot of light.”
“Regarding the program, I am incredibly happy. My mentor and I created a great pair, and he helped me a lot with my problems, both professional and personal.”
“The mentoring program seems super cool to me, and I like it a lot. My mentor is super cool, and I know if it were not for this mentorship, I could not get the opportunity to have his attention and time as he is so busy.”
"My mentor is everything I could wish for, and I thank you for this opportunity.”
We, the People Team, were in charge of this project and we want to share some details with yoy about the outcomes of the pilot, the next edition of the mentoring program, and some insights about the L&D area.
The essence of our mentoring program was to promote lifelong learning, a value we nourish every day in our mindit.io community. It was designed to serve a few main purposes, such as: creating a special knowledge transfer framework inside our community, developing professional relationships between mentors and mentees, and ensuring practical application of the organization’s values.
Another important objective was to raise new mentors, by giving our people the opportunity to contribute both to their career path and to the future growth of the business, by creating an inspiring workplace.
Of course, this initiative deeply impacts other internal processes, like onboarding (because it facilitates it) & retention. We adapted it for both technical and non-technical colleagues, so all of us can take the chance to participate and develop throughout this great program.
We knew from the very first moment when we began the planning that the name must have an impact and be representative of what we want to do. With a bit of help from our marketing wizard, Vlad Teodorescu Bîrlă, we decided that "Mind your Growth” would be the best idea to name the program: it directly refers to our company’s name, emphasizing that it is important to take care, to be proactive, to consider over and over again the area of growth – which is the second important concept of the program.
As soon as you start minding your own professional and personal growth, success will appear on your career path. We stepped in to help our community connect, to have a structured framework for sharing their experience, and to find solutions together for any difficult situation.
I am very happy to say that we achieved 94% of our initial objectives. We listed 7 different targets for this program, and 5 of them were met 100%. We analyzed the challenges that came on our way to achieve 100% of our initial objectives and we will adjust our improvement plan based on measurements and feedback.
First of all, we were impressed by the interest shown in this program: we had 91 colleagues that signed up for this pilot program: 66 colleagues to be mentees and 25 colleagues to be mentors. We started the program with 42 mentees (of which 8 were part of the internship program) and all registered 25 mentors. We had mentors that were paired with one, two, or even three mentees, to test these options for future editions. We had 38 pairs (with individual mentorship between mentor-mentee) & 23 pairs between (mentor - 1, 2, or 3 mentees). 90% of mentees and 92% of mentors completed the program.
Second, we wanted to increase the satisfaction of mentees regarding their professional status by considering the accumulated knowledge & experience during mentoring program. We had 3 different sessions of formal feedback (online form) collected from mentees (at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the program).
We also had individual discussions with mentees during the program and collected a lot of feedback on the spot. The average score from the beginning of the program was increased by 25% by the end of the program. We could see an improvement here using quantitative data and we correlated it with qualitative feedback received from our participants which confirms that they were delighted with this experience and felt the impact.
Last but not least, we believe that the learning process is happening in both directions. Even if you are a mentor, you can still learn & get a fresh vibe from your mentee. 94% of mentors confirmed that the mentorship experience helped them to enrich their knowledge & professional experience. Therefore, we were happy to give a growing opportunity for seniors as well.
The next edition of the “Mind your Growth” mentoring program will start in early June of this year, we will use the next period to properly plan it, as we want to be back with an even more powerful experience for both our mentors and mentees. We analyzed each input from participants and listed our action points based on that constructive and encouraging feedback.
We are aware that Learning & Development (L&D) is one of the most important aspects of the growth and success of an organization. There are consistent studies proving that people often search for these kinds of benefits & initiatives when looking for a new job opportunity. We invest in this area, and we are preparing learning and growth opportunities for every person in our community, technical or non-technical, of any level.
We organized an internship a few months ago. We also carried out the program called "Back to School", a series of training for our colleagues, which had very good feedback and which will soon turn into a more in-depth L&D initiative. This year's strategy includes several projects with a focus on this area and we are excited to be able to deliver such initiatives to our kind community.
We are confident that the mindit.io L&D plan will be a main pillar for our people’s growth, helping each one of us develop our power skills, our creativity, and our employee experience.
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