Mentorship has become one of the most invested in strategy of the modern day enterprise processes. Today, more and more businesses, in the race of becoming the number one brand in their category, are not just willing but are also partnering with the top mentors of the industry to teach the ropes of work to their employees.
In fact, mentoring is not something that is restricted to a corporate program, employees – freshers and experienced alike – are enrolling in online mentorship programs to a great extent to advance their career, to take a much informed business decision, or simply to handle the inter personal part of corporate life such as salary negotiation, disagreement within the team, and most often than not, to learn how to ask for a promotion before the appraisal cycle.
In ways, a mentoring platform has become a plan that is invested in by all – Corporate HR to keep their employees engaged, Fresher who is still learning the ropes of a corporate culture, or a 50 year old employee who thinks it is time to move ahead of his old process and talk in the millennial language.This increased demand has created a ripple effect in the app industry, with businesses now looking to invest in mentorship app development.
With this investment, they are looking to gain from the benefits that the mentorship program offers outside of the mobile realm.
Let us look into some of the benefits that are drawing people, all across the globe, to enroll in a mentorship program – the ones that are driving the demand for app development company which specializes in mentoring platform apps as well.
1- Employees use Mentorship Programs to Learn of new Opportunities
There are a number of instances when employees get in a rut, working around the same set of functions day in and day out. This lead to them losing a sight of what is happening in their job profile at the industry level and what are the new skills that are being demanded by companies in someone of their job profile.
By enrolling in and getting active in a mentoring platform, they get to know of where they stand in the industry and what they need to do more to join the league of the cream of their industry.
2- Employees Become more Loyal Towards their Company
The number one complaint that today’s employees have which ultimately prompts them to make a job switch is lack of mentorship and learning in the current organization. And when a company starts giving them the ways and tools to grow and aspire in their career graph as a whole, they start accepting their company to a greater extent.
Also, with an open mentorship platform program, the users get an access to have a discussion beyond their job role and direct reporting managers.
A mentoring platform like this makes a corporate culture flat, which directly leads to a greater chance at visibility in the corporate.
3- Employees Become More Innovative
All the mentorship programs give the employees a clear idea of what is happening in the industry outside of their company and where their competitors and the industry in general headed to gain maximum return on effort.
With an idea of where the world would be headed in the coming future, employees are able to make amends in their work process or even in their thinking pattern today itself, making them much innovative.
Now that we have thrown some light on the benefits that pushes employees to invest in a mentoring platform, it is time to take a deep dive into what the mentoring platform should look like in terms of not just the type of mentoring programmes but also the features that it should include to impart the best learning.
Let us begin.
Tos tart with, let us look into the three mentoring programs you can choose from to incorporate in your app.
- Individual
In individual setup, one mentor interacts with one mentee in the mentoring platform. This is considered one of the most ideal ways of imparting knowledge. The learning here can be either too complex or too personal to not to be shared within a group let alone a whole organization.
- Group
This is where one mentor interacts with a group of mentees in the platform. It usually happens when the corporate size is mid level and when there are a set of people who are all willing to learn a new technology or need to grasp knowledge on a particular topic that is not on a mass adoption road.
- Collaborative
In this scenario, a number of mentors interact and deal with number of mentees. This mechanism is ideal when the corporate size is very large and there are a number of people in one team, who are at different level of experience in their job role.
Hope this would help you decide which mentoring platform you should be focussing on. Now, irrespective of what your choice is, there are some features that are common in all online mentoring platforms, which you can also not afford to leave out from your mentoring app.
Here they are –
1- Platform for Correct Mentor Mentee Match
The present and future of your mentoring platform app is entirely dependent exactly on how well you connect the mentee with mentor. Ensure that you have the right set of algorithms in place that would match your mentee’s learning needs with your mentor’s experience.
2- Program History
Your mentoring platform app should have the provision for the mentors and mentees to go back to some day or some class within the platform itself. This will not just help with revisions but also to note the progress made.
3- An Access-to-all Forum
A forum will allow all the mentees to have a discussion among themselves about the class and it would also enable the mentors to make a common announcement that is directed towards all the participants in the mentoring programme.
4- Chat
Chat functionality will enable mentor and mentees to have a one on one conversation related to everything about the course structure or to make and address queries.
5- In-App Payment Option
Your mentoring platform should have a secured payment mechanism to make it easy and secure for mentees to make payments for mentors’ class directly.
6- Push Notifications
Since your mentoring platform is directed towards working category, it is wrong to assume that they would have the time to be active on your app at all times. In fact, it is quite possible that attending a session would even drop from their mind and so it is extremely important to have a push notification system to inform the mentees when the mentor class is beginning or when the test results are posted etc.
With this, you now have the idea of the various benefits that an online mentoring platform has to offer and the must have features that it should contain. The only thing that you have to remember now is to make your app the one that the world of corporate goers uses, is that you should float across a clear guideline that the ultimate focus should always be on imparting real value to your mentees and that no new training module should be touched upon until each and every mentee is satisfied.
The moment value embedding becomes of utmost importance for your brand, you will automatically be able to become a go-to name for all the world’s learning needs.
