Corporations increasingly hold themselves accountable for their impact on both communities and internal stakeholders. Ideal Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives advance philanthropic goals while strengthening employee engagement and skills.
Given today’s digital environment, corporate-sponsored eMentoring programs offer unique benefits to organizations, employees, and the populations they serve.
As we conclude our celebration of National Mentoring Month, we would like to share nine key excerpts about eMentoring from MENTOR’s indispensable report on the subject.
This report underscores the practical advantages of eMentoring for sponsoring organizations, such as increased reach, adaptability, and the potential for stronger employee satisfaction and retention. Indeed, companies can demonstrate return on investment from these programs by tracking measurable outcomes of both their workforce and the communities they serve.
Cricket eMentoring programs, CricketTogether (advances student literacy and social-emotional development) and TryEngineering Together (enables student STEM skill progress), are showcased as best practice cases in the report. Here are nine essential advantages of eMentoring highlighted by the report:
- Fits with our tech-connected society.
“This type of mentoring has grown in popularity over the past couple of decades with the now ubiquitous use of the internet, cell phones, and social media, especially among young people.”
“With technology playing an increasingly important role in everyone’s lives, these relationships and eMentoring models will continue to grow in importance and relevance in the mentoring field.”
- Offers advantages over in-person mentoring.
“… E-mentoring programs offer some clear advantages over in-person models and may, in theory, be better positioned to meet the needs of youth with specific challenges or in fostering different types of meaningful adult-youth interactions.”
- Connects over distance, safely.
“These diverse e-mentoring models can connect individuals literally a world apart and offer potentially greater and more frequent access to a variety of different types of mentors. They can also offer some youth safety and participant monitoring capabilities that go beyond what many in-person programs can offer.”
- Enables and encourages more frequent interaction between mentor and mentee.
“E-mentoring provides an opportunity for regular meetings without physical barriers.”
“The research was quite clear that programs should do everything they can to boost the frequency and depth of interactions that mentors and youth have. This frequency was closely tied to outcomes and overall satisfaction with the experience.”
- Has the capacity to reach isolated populations.
“That there is tremendous potential with e-mentoring that can also be brought out with strong program practices. These programs can offer both a volume of mentors and the delivery of “just-in-time” mentoring interactions that are frankly impossible to provide using in-person models. These programs can connect those who are isolated to a world of support and allow youth to get expert advice in ways that only digital communication allows.”
“Some youth, such as those in rural locations or of lower socioeconomic status, may benefit from e-mentoring more than youth who do not have difficulty accessing transportation or a more stable family setting.”
- Invites personal connection and growth.
“There are many processes through which e-mentoring can facilitate positive gains or personal growth for youth
• Offsetting youth isolation and increasing feelings of belonging and connectedness.
• Providing access to high-level subject matter expertise and project/goal-setting support
• Increasing social support and feelings of self-efficacy…
• Many articles discussed how youth often felt more comfortable sharing online as opposed to in person.”
- Eliminates status and physical barriers.
“One of the leading factors in relationship closeness was what one researcher termed ‘electronic chemistry’ — the ability of mentors and youth to connect electronically in ways that were mutually satisfying, fun, and imbued with personality in spite of the limitations of communicating digitally. In fact, it was theorized that online relationships can often become what are called “hyper-relationships” where the closeness and satisfaction exceeds in-person relationships because status and other factors are stripped away in the virtual environment, and users can craft perfect responses that represent their best selves at all times.”
- Tailored to needs of young people.
“Mentoring virtually is not only a fun and enjoyable experience, but that this type of mentoring is actually a preferred form of support that has many advantages over in-person mentoring, specifically for supporting the needs of the young people in the program.”
- Expands reach.
“One of the interesting features of e-mentoring programs is that they can have an easier time taking their service to scale, often across wide geographic areas, compared to in-person programs. The online technology platforms of these programs can often be implemented just about anywhere that has reliable internet access.”
To learn of real-world cases of corporate sponsors benefitting from eMentoring, schedule a call today with Cricket eMentoring Director, Kahti Motley: https://calendly.com/kmotley-cricketmedia/30min
To read the full report please visit MENTOR website at https://www.mentoring.org/ementoring/ or download it directly here.
About MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership is the unifying champion for quality youth mentoring in the United States. MENTOR’s mission is to close the mentoring gap and ensure our nation’s young people have the support they need through quality mentoring relationships to succeed at home, school, and ultimately, work. To achieve this, MENTOR collaborates with its Affiliates and works to drive the investment of time and money into high-impact mentoring programs and advance quality mentoring through the development and delivery of standards, cutting-edge research, and state-of-the-art tools.
