Features of evaluating the effectiveness of a mentor's work by company employees

Abstract

Introduction. In the era of information technology, when information becomes available and narrow specialization becomes the norm, mentoring remains an important mechanism for the transfer of unique skills and knowledge. In addition, through the mentoring institute, not only structured expert knowledge is relayed, but also a significant amount of professional practice is transferred, which forms the mentee's readiness for real challenges. In this regard, the analysis of the effectiveness of mentoring in modern Russia is becoming an extremely urgent task. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring (using the example of a Russian company). An additional task of the study was the primary adaptation of M. Yukawa's English-language questionnaire on evaluating the effectiveness of mentoring. Materials and methods. The online survey was conducted in the fall of 2023, 1,356 representatives of a Russian company took part in it, the average age of respondents was 17.67 years (SD = 2.02) (40.6% were men, 59.4% were women). The toolkit included a 13-point questionnaire to assess the effectiveness of mentoring by M. Yukawa, a personality questionnaire of the ‟Big Five”, as well as a questionnaire to measure the emotional empathy of M. Mehrabyan and N. Epstein. In addition, the questionnaire was supplemented with a question to assess the effectiveness of mentoring. Motivation was also assessed: both the mentor and the mentee (self-assessment of motivation). Results of the study. Mentees refer to the most developed qualities of a mentor as the ability to listen and have experience, and to the least – the ability to find a balance between work and personal life, as well as an interest in expanding the circle of professional contacts of the mentee and advice in building a career. Women were significantly more likely to agree that their mentor was available to solve all issues. Older mentees, as well as those with more experience or a higher level of education, were more likely to rate the mentor as more effective. Mentors with a high level of empathy and openness to experience become receptive to the demonstration of professional experience by a mentor, according to the data obtained. The mentoring process as a whole is not rated very highly by the mentee, and the mentor's motivation is rated higher than the mentee's self-assessment of motivation. This indicates the hidden reserves of the mentoring mechanism. The analysis of correlations demonstrated the expected positive relationship between the subjective assessment of the effectiveness of the mentoring process with all the statements of the mentoring effectiveness assessment questionnaire. In addition, the mentoring effectiveness assessment questionnaire showed high internal consistency. Conclusion. The conducted research on the effectiveness of mentoring and the results obtained pose new challenges to clarify many aspects of the mentoring phenomenon related to the motivation and empathy of the mentored, as well as the specifics of working with young personnel who do not have work experience.