A small organization for medical professionals wanted to create an upskilling program for its members on a subject that required nuance and sensitivity.
The challenge was how to support skill acquisition for their geographically distributed member audience members.
A mentorship experience seemed like the right path. But a great mentorship experience requires the right balance of personalities, professional interests and availability, and the L&D team lacked the bandwidth and resources to make these matches.
Once again, learner choice and learner control helped the team overcome this challenge: Every learner, wherever they worked, had a colleague they knew and respected. They just needed some support to help them approach their prospective mentor, make the ask and build the relationship.
A “Build Your Own Mentorship” guide, complete with talking points that helped learners deepen their understanding of concepts from the asynchronous training, helped them do just that. Learners had complete control over their mentorship experience, beginning with their decision to participate and including whom they chose as a mentor and what they talked about.
Learners concluded the program with ongoing, long-term professional relationships they could rely on for support, advice and encouragement — and appreciated the mentorship experience as a valued employee benefit. Meanwhile, the organization was able to capture the institutional knowledge and experience of its internal experts and turnkey their wisdom to a new generation of employees without having to invest additional resources or oversight in the matching process.