Mentoring programs have been widely used to help equity-denied individuals to either find roles or to advance their careers. ‘Women in Leadership’ programs have a mentoring component. Newcomers participate in mentoring programs that focus on understanding the Canadian labour market. There are black focused youth and adult programs designed to support these potential candidates to overcome barriers to employment and advancement. The goal of mentoring programs is to assist the individuals by building their capacity to find success.
For newcomers, for whom it is frustratingly difficult to find employment (never mind commensurate level employment), understanding how Canadian organizations hire and how to nail an interview is critically important. For all, to learn how to navigate the unspoken norms of Canadian organizational culture – the rules of engagement that you only learn over time, through osmosis or by keen observation – is necessary to ‘fit in’ teams or to advance within an organization.
One could argue that these programs also build greater inclusion as those who are acting as mentors are often knowledge, influence and power holders who also learn from the mentee (at least, if the mentoring program is constructed correctly). However, what these programs do not do is to build equity in the workplace or sector. By focusing on the mentee, we are implying that the obstacles to success lie solely within them, that knowledge and competencies are lacking which need to be built in order to be successful.
However, by focusing only on the one-side of the equation, we are missing the mark and won’t achieve greater equity. We have to question where the obstacles lie within our recruitment, performance management and succession planning processes. Why are we coaching individuals to jump over the hurdles, rather than remove the hurdles? We need to question whether these hurdles are necessary to win the race. We need to evaluate the organizational culture and talent management practices in place that makes it necessary for mentoring programs that target equity-denied individuals.
Mentoring programs that operate in a silo will have limited success. The representation numbers might change a bit – more newcomers are hired, more blacks advance to management or enter the sector, more women rise to senior leadership, but using mentoring programs is a slow, labourious method because they are solely reliant on the tenacity of the individual..
Organizations need to look at their internal systems including how performance appraisal processes, how ‘high’ potential employees are identified, how stretch assignments are assigned and the succession planning process. By being intentional and asking several ‘why’ questions, new organizational practices can be born and embedded over time into the way in which organizations identify, promote and reward its employees.