Mentoring to the Bottom Line

Rapid growth and constant flux are the norm in life science companies, and organizational growth, development, and knowledge-building can easily suffer in companies at all development stages. Establishing an internal mentoring program is a relatively inexpensive and effective way of managing change and growth.

Intel, known for innovative excellence, has used its mentoring program beyond traditional goals of career advancement to enable management development and knowledge transfer, problem-solving, and training new recruits. Often intermingled with coaching, mentoring's emphasis is on social and holistic personal development of an individual, whereas coaching emphasizes transfer of particular skills or knowledge. Mentors open doors, provide sponsorship, validation, and affirmation, and become energized with new ways to employ skills and knowledge. Whether they are young employees or new hires, prot￩g￩s develop a beneficial network, focus on career development, and integrate into corporate culture more quickly in a mentored environment. A mentoring program aims to help the bottom line by allowing workers to contribute sooner, and to reduce employee turnover.

Genentech, for example, provides a mentoring toolkit online for all its employees. Introduced late in 2005, the toolkit provides information on how to be a mentor as well as information for prot￩g￩s. The program is informal, and is inspired by Genentech's highly innovative and academically-influenced culture. Early evidence indicates that the program has been well received, says Tanja Miller, program manager for the mentoring toolkit. Miller says employees are excited about the toolkit and plan to use it. Now the company will have to evaluate participation as well as goals.

Human Genome Sciences in Rockville, Md., initiated a year-long pilot mentoring program in June. Project manager Shiva Gohari Fritsch researched successful mentoring programs from Microsoft, UPS, and the University of Maryland before launching the company's version. Eight prot￩g￩s were selected, and they each established between two and five goals they wanted to achieve with their cross-functional mentors.

Companies specifically looking to enhance their diversity may want to tap into programs such as the Women's Technology Cluster in the San Francisco Bay Area, which provides formal mentoring services as part of its business incubator, and currently lists more than 170 business mentors on its Web site (www.wtc-sf.org). MentorNet (www.mentornet.net) is an e-mentoring network for people in engineering, science, and mathematics. It provides email-based mentors from industry and academia to help women and others underrepresented in biotechnology.

When building a mentor program, design it with your company culture in mind-that is, if you are in a growth phase, try a mentoring program for the integration of new hires. Start small, with management's full support and reasonable goals and expectations. Include metrics to measure the success of the program, and fine-tune the program as you roll it out to more areas of the company.

Betsy Alberty heads BioEquities Recruiting, a biotech and life sciences recruiting firm in Mill Valley, Calif.