Effectiveness of Mentoring in the Career Progression of Protégés.

Abstract

Mentoring is a nurturing relationship where an individual who has progressed in his or her career guides, supports and advices those of more junior personnel in order to boost the junior personnel’s career progression. Hezlett & Gibson, (2005) revealed that among the benefits of mentoring; those with effective mentors earn greater compensation, promote more rapidly and have greater career mobility than the ones with no mentors at all. Thus the researchers found such relationships are intriguing and sought to assess the effectiveness of such relationships in delivering career progression. The same was interested in justifying the expenses companies spend on formal mentoring programs. As such, this study was focused on how effective mentoring programs are in affecting career progression of the mentees who undergo such relationship. Data were collected from 100 respondents, using online questionnaires to assess the level of existence of factors that affect effective mentoring. At the latter part of the questionnaire, a self-evaluation of the respondent with regard to the career progression aspects was conducted to measure how a cause and effect relationship can be built between career progressions and mentoring. The analysis revealed that an effective mentoring program does have an effect on career progression of protégés. Furthermore, factors affecting effective mentoring including, requiring commitment, career goal and risk orientation and role modelling aspects proved to be have a higher significant effect on the career progression of protégés.