National Mentoring Day Highlights Importance of Supporting Others’ Career Growth

A mentor can significantly impact your career by sharing their knowledge, providing networking opportunities, and offering insight to help you—the mentee—navigate your workplace and industry.

National Mentoring Day on Oct. 27 underscores the importance of mentoring for individuals, whether they’re students, recent graduates, or tenured employees—including those in the C-suite.

Launched in the U.K. in 2014, National Mentoring Day became a global event in 2020. It’s held annually to raise awareness of the many mentoring initiatives, to showcase the benefits of mentoring, and to encourage individuals to become mentors or mentees.

Mentors can offer suggestions to hone your skills and learn new ones. Nearly half (46%) of 1,041 full-time office workers fear their skills will become obsolete within the next five years as artificial intelligence reshapes the workplace, according to a 2024 report, Training for the Futureof Work, from Kahoot!, a global learning platform based in Oslo, Norway.

Mentors can also help students prepare for their career, and for professionals to prevent their own careers from stalling. Under reverse mentoring, a younger employee may serve as a mentor to a senior colleague by providing guidance in digital or other technology-based skills, for example.

Characteristics of a good mentoring program, according to SHRM, include:

• Genuine interest from both the mentor and the mentee. 
• Time to participate. 
• Commitment.
• Confidentiality.
• Clear, open, two-way communication.
• Excellent listening skills.
• Self-motivation.
• Mutually established and clear goals.

Mentorship requires a level of trust, and a recent survey found that younger generations in the workforce place a lot of trust in their bosses for career advice: Generation Z (71%), Millennials (70%), and Generation X (60%) said their supervisors were a trusted source for career direction, according to an Oct. 2 survey of 1,000 individuals ages 18-65 for Enhancv, a software-as-a-service company in Sofia, Bulgaria, that uses a web platform for creating modern resumes.

“Younger employees have more contact with HR professionals early in their careers,”  said Jacques Buffett, digital PR manager at Enhancv.

“They’'re more likely to undergo recruitment, onboarding, and job changes more often than older age groups. This more frequent interaction with HR professionals may lead them to associate HR with trustworthy career advice.”

Additionally, HR is often responsible for implementing policies around inclusion, equity, and diversity; mental health, and work-lifework/life balance—areas Gen Z and Millennials place greater importance on compared to other generations.

“This alignment makes HR advice seem more in sync with their own values, and therefore worthy of respect,” Buffett added.

SHRM collected the following news articles and resources related to mentoring:

Mentoring at Work: How (and Why) to Implement It into Your Organization

Whether it’s a formal or informal arrangement, mentoring at work benefits everyone involved: the mentor, the mentee, and the organization that supports it. Effective mentors develop the leadership capacity of their mentees, while increasing their own skills, and they create depth and loyalty within their organizations. Plus, they transfer their knowledge and expertise back into their organizations. Here are some research findings, insights, and recommendations on mentoring in organizations to help you structure an effective program. (Center for Creative Leadership)

Mentoring vs. Coaching: Key Differences and Benefits

Both mentoring and coaching involve assisting individuals to achieve success and overcome work challenges. However, there are some key differences. (Indeed.com )

Key Features of an Effective Mentoring Relationship

Read on to discover the desired qualities of mentors and mentees, their responsibilities of all parties in a mentorship—including the organization—and the phases of a mentoring relationship. (George Washington University)

Want a Successful Mentorship Experience? Do Your Part

There is more to a mentoring relationship than simply having a more experienced person to run to for career advice. The first step for mentees is recognizing their responsibilities in the relationship and taking them seriously. (SHRM)

Models in Mentoring

While traditional, one-on-one mentorship programs have long been the gold standard, today’s professionals are tailoring them to fit their unique career goals. Here are six examples of successful mentorship pairs that illustrate how traditional mentorships and new and emerging models can help foster professional development for all employees. (All Things Work)

SHRM Foundation Names 2024 Mentor of the Year

Kylee Rooney, SHRM-CP, received the SHRM Foundation’s 2024 Mentor of the Year Award. This is the third year the Foundation has given the award, which recognizes a person working full time in an HR-related position or role who has also devoted time to a mentee’s career growth. Rooney met her mentee, a University of West Florida student studying HR management, through the SHRM Foundation’s Fall 2023 HR Career Mentoring Program.

Share Your Expertise—Become A Mentor!

SHRM has a variety of mentoring programs. They include “HR Pathways and Perspectives,” which consists of national and local 60- to 90-minute virtual career mentoring events; “HR Pathways and Perspectives,” a four-week virtual career development experience with group-based mentorship and weekly, project-based learning challenges; and “HR Career Mentoring,” where participants are matched with mentors for a three-month, structured mentoring experience designed for students. (SHRM Foundation)