Remote mentoring is a best practice that offers a solution to one of the biggest challenges for hybrid and remote work: on-the-job training and integration of recently-hired staff. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes mentoring for effective integration of junior employees in hybrid and remote teams.

Video: “Mentoring for Effective Integration of Junior Employees”

Podcast: “Mentoring for Effective Integration of Junior Employees”

Links Mentioned in Videocast and Podcast

• Here is the article: Mentoring for Effective Integration of Junior Employees
• The book Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage is available here.
• You are welcome to register for the free Wise Decision Maker Course 

Transcript

Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, and this is the Wise Decision Maker Show. Today we’ll talk about mentoring for effective integration of junior employees in hybrid and remote teams. This is a big issue, how do you effectively integrate junior employees in remote teams and hybrid teams? Many leaders struggle with this. And they’re concerned that a hybrid or remote work model hybrid model where people come in one day a week fully remote model really undermines on the job training, which is incredibly important for junior employees, integration of junior employees into company culture, and then their ability of junior employees to have cross functional collaboration by lacking connections to these folks. So as a result, many leaders want everyone, junior staff and senior staff and everyone to return back to the office for most or even all of the workweek. Okay, so that’s a problem. Because, of course, people coming back to the office, or they are not happy, many, many want lots more flexibility than they don’t want to come in more than one day a week. And then you want to be fully remote. So we can solve this through hybrid and remote mentoring. What you want to do is pair junior staff with senior colleagues. So what you’ll want is three mentors. That’s one senior staff member from the new members currency. So not the leader of the team, not the leader, but a senior team member from their current team, and then to senior team members from outside their team to two senior employees from outside the team, junior employees. By the way, anything free who has been at the company for less than three years, more senior employees are the ones who have been in the company for over five years. So one of the senior employees, not from the same team, but from the same business unit, and one from a different business unit. And if your company has more than one region, you should have someone one of these people from the same business unit or a different business unit should be from a different region to give them that broader perspective. Now, what are the challenges that these mentors address mentors from the same team so that senior team members in the same team will help the mentee, the junior staff member with learning on the job? What’s on the job is the ability to quickly and immediately ask questions, get them answered, and come to a trusted source for these questions. Understanding group dynamics, how the team works, what are the interactions like professional growth within the company, while mentors from outside the team, they help with integrating junior team members into the broader company culture and cross functional collaboration. So func cross functional collaboration, of course, being from different businesses from the same business unit, but different teams and from different business units. Those all are valuable cross functional collaboration, cross functional collaboration, especially something that we’ve seen, be challenged by hybrid networks. So this is especially for junior staff members. So this is really helpful to have those two people from outside their team. I’ve seen people just say, Well, can we just go by with one mentor from their own team. Now you really want two people from outside the team. If for some reason your employee is relaxing, start with one. But ideally, you will have two senior employees who are mentors for this person from outside their team. You’ll have meetings together on the job learning going. So from the same team, mentor and mentee meet monthly at least monthly for 20 to 30 minutes. So schedule 30 minutes, Michael for 20 minutes. And the mentor talks to the mentee about how the mentee is doing on their individual tasks, what they have to do, how are they collaborating with the rest of the team? And how are they developing professionally in general, it’s very important to help them advance in the company. Okay, what about mentors from outside the team, again, meet monthly for 20 to 30 minutes. And the mentors from outside the team. So same business units and different business units, ideally, someone from outside the region, we’ll talk about improving the existing connections within the company. So developing new connections, forming new connections, how are they doing on that this month, and their career growth inside the company. So getting them that cross cultural collaboration going, integrating them into the company culture and helping grow their career? Another so that’s going to be specifically a meeting devoted to mentoring. Another thing that mentors should do is have virtual coworking, virtual coworking ideally, this should be daily. Definitely haven’t been something like every other day. I mean, you want to start with it once a week, but you definitely want to get to it where this is a daily activity. So in at least an hour each week, I would strongly encourage getting this to daily activity. This is really beneficial for mentees, but start with at least an hour each week. So what do you do? You join a video conference call. So you get the mentor and the mentee gets a video conference call. And both talk about what they plan to work on. And this is your individual task and you’re not talking about mentoring. You’re just there to work on your individual tasks. With the video conference going to turn your microphones off. Leaving your speaker silent video is optional. I recommend having video but it’s optional. Some people are drained by having video. Everyone works on their own tasks. So they’re their own tasks. And anyone can ask questions as needed. problem solve shared ideas. Overwhelmingly, of course, is the junior staff member who has questions and you get the immediate on the job training, because the mentor can help answer those questions very helpful. So the benefit is that it replicates the experience of working in shared cubicles with the mentee. quickly resolve problems, collaborate, and then share expertise. And the mentor shares his or her expertise through screen sharing. So you can share the screen virtual whiteboards, of course, just talking about the problem. So you, as a mentee, would bond with the mentor and get your questions answered, integrating into company culture. That is very, very helpful. All right, everyone. I hope this episode of the wise decision maker show has been helpful for you. And my name is Dr. Gleb Tsipursky. I’m the CEO of disaster avoidance experts. Please email me at Gleb at disaster avoidance experts with your feedback on the show. And please leave a review. It helps other folks discover this show. And if you like the show, please make sure to subscribe to whatever venue you’ve been listening to , whether we have a video cast version on YouTube, we have podcast versions on iTunes, Amazon Music, Spreaker or whatever. Alright, I look forward to seeing you. The next episode of the wisest decision maker show that in the meantime, the wisest most profitable decisions to my friends 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai 

Originally Published at Disaster Avoidance Experts on July 26, 2022.

Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky helps tech and insurance executives drive collaboration, innovation, and retention in hybrid work. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which helps organizations adopt a hybrid-first culture, instead of incrementally improving on the traditional office-centric culture. A best-selling author of 7 books, he is especially well-known for his global best-sellers Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019) and The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020). His newest book is Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021). His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, and other languages. His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in prominent venues. They include Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Inc. Magazine, CBS News, Time, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fast Company, USA Today, and elsewhere. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for mid-size and large organizations ranging from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from his research background as a cognitive scientist. After spending 8 years getting a PhD and lecturing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he served for 7 years as a professor at the Ohio State University’s Decision Sciences Collaborative and History Department. He lives in Columbus, Ohio (Go Bucks!) and in his free time, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid his personal life turning into a disaster. Contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on LinkedIn @dr-gleb-tsipursky, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Facebook @DrGlebTsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, YouTube, and RSS, and get a free copy of the Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace by signing up for the free Wise Decision Maker Course at https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/newsletter/