Mentoring at Pick Everard

At the end of October 2021, I wrote about the upcoming launch of The Pick Everard RISE (Reaching, Inspiring, Supporting in Excellence) Programme, which is the firm’s first national mentoring programme. The programme enables all of our employees, across all our regions and offices, to access a mentor if they require one. The programme also provides an opportunity for employees to access vital learning and development across disciplines and locations, creating a more collaborative environment.

I am proud to announce that the RISE programme has been successfully launched and we have had 35% of our people sign up to take part in the programme either as a mentor or as a mentee. To ensure that we matched our people correctly, we asked our mentors to complete ‘mentor profiles’ which we have featured on our People & Culture Intranet page. Doing so has enabled our mentees to learn about our mentor’s backgrounds and the skills that they will be able to help to develop. In turn, we asked the mentees to identify the skills that they wanted to work on. Our Learning & Development team have taken the time to make matches based on the information from all participants.

Our participants are at the beginning of their mentoring relationships and are currently taking the time to have chemistry meetings with each other. This is providing the opportunity for each person to assess the needs and goals of the mentee and whether the mentor would be able to help the mentee to achieve them. Additionally, this meeting allows for both people to agree to boundaries and set expectations, such as how often they will meet.

One thing that we have noticed is that there is a strong sense of diversity across both our mentors and mentees, in relation to their skills, experiences and perspectives. This is really positive for the Practice, because by bringing together a mix of different employees it brings a number of advantages for our people and the business.

Personal growth. The mentoring will give the opportunity to embrace difference perspectives and explore curiosities. It gives them the opportunity to enhance their learning and to step outside of their comfort zone.
Creativity and Innovation. The bringing together of different people and the sharing of different views will allow for sparks of creativity and better solutions.
Higher performance. The mentoring relationship will not only help to increase performance for the mentee but also for the mentor. Everyone at Pick Everard is an expert in something and RISE allows for us to pull this all together.

Over the next few weeks, our pairings will be finalised. I look forward to providing updates throughout the year on the progress of RISE, and how this important programme develops our employees and increases engagement.