Why mentoring your new employee sets you up for a win

Often times, new employees of small businesses are thrown in the deep end. Unlike being hired by a big corporate, there’s no induction, employee training, employee manual or guide and certainly no HR person who takes care of all their needs. What’s more, new employees in a small business are expected to operate without the processes or internal infrastructure that corporates offer.

This is where coaching and mentoring is the better option as opposed to regular run-of-the-mill training. Let’s face it – the training of new staff is meant to be exciting and motivational but often it’s just an unenthusiastic walk around the office space and a rush to get back to regular work.

As a small business owner looking to employ staff, you should consider partaking in a coaching course or a mentoring course and here’s why:

Facilitate your new staff member’s opportunity to experience accelerated growth

In most small businesses the staff members can enjoy accelerated growth if they perform. Within smaller companies employees are expected to pick up the ball on whatever task is a priority as opposed to sticking to a strict job description. This means that you are often hiring someone who is a jack-of-all-trades looking to master and specialise, and you, as the business owner, can facilitate their growth if you mentor them. Mentoring a new hire sufficiently will help them realise their success, and be mutually beneficial.

You can bridge the gap between a theoretical understanding and a pragmatic approach

By mentoring or coaching your new hire you are able to ensure that they have a solid understanding of your company’s operations, ethos and value proposition and know how to practically implement their skillset in optimising service delivery. By playing the role of a mentor to your new employee you will also become a daily touch point for them which will result in a fairly close relationship – this will likely lead to both of you learning from each other.

Losing staff members and finding new ones is a costly affair

As a small business owner hiring new staff and losing ones that didn’t work out might not affect your back pocket right now, but it will cost you in time spent away from focusing on your priority, your company. Whereas by spending the time to mentor your new staff, you’re able to boost morale, engagement and ultimately, deepen loyalty.

Don’t mistake mentoring for micromanaging though – while you touch base daily you are doing so in a way that underpins the staff member’s success and growth and not double-checking their productivity.

When looking for staff members to join your business venture or if you want to add to your current staff complement you should look at individuals who have a flexible nature and who can remain agile with your company. Ideally, see if you can find an employee who has start-up experience as they will already have been toughened up with no expectations of what a comfy corporate environment might offer. This personality type is also likely to be open to the idea of taking part in a mentoring program and eventually becoming a mentor to future employees in your company.

This article is provided by Kwelanga Training, which provides coaching and mentoring to small business owners.