What is Reverse Mentoring?
Reverse Mentoring is a practice where less experienced or junior individuals share skills in a specific area where they are more knowledgeable than senior or older employees. Reverse mentoring creates a mutually beneficial learning environment. Although, due to the presence of some egoist mindset, old employees often face challenges during mentoring practices.
Example of Reverse Mentoring
Let’s see how reverse mentoring works in the workplace. In a workplace, generally, employers experience multigenerational workforce handling. There can be one scenario where a team of experienced employees is led by a young manager who just completed her management degree and joined as a team leader. Or, a group of old employees gets a chance to acquaint themselves with the new technology and trends from Gen-Z and millennials.
But, it is essential to undertake reverse mentoring practices strategically helping the management to create intergenerational learning through this incredibly powerful method.
How Does Reverse Mentoring Work?
There is no age limit for acquiring or delivering knowledge; it’s always time to learn or teach. So, the management have not to follow any different process but keep following same guidelines. Only one difference can be seen in the case of reverse mentoring: Young experts can take part in delivering learning lessons to others, whereas, in traditional mentoring, the scope is limited between experienced candidates. Though there is no particular process, the company can maintain the following to apply reverse mentoring practices effectively. The possibilities, however, are endless.
- Maintaining a solid understanding between experienced and junior employees.
- Delivering diverse technical knowledge to employees irrespective of their age and experience.
- Providing a good scope for the old employees to be aware of new trends and recent challenges.
Benefits of Reverse Mentoring
Reverse mentoring offers numerous benefits and helps in making a diverse and inclusive workplace; those are,
1. Promote Diversity
Reverse mentoring in a workplace provides an equal opportunity for old and new employees to ask queries, whether it is about sharing technical knowledge or developing product skills. Moreover, the practice ensures a balanced work culture or a diverse environment where employees can build up smooth collaboration, which helps enhance employee engagement and company business profit.
2. Introduce New Perspective
A newly graduated candidate comes into an organization with a positive and fresh mindset. Besides, as they are newbies, they don’t have enough knowledge of corporate hassles. By initiating a reverse mentoring method, an organization can provide a platform for new hires to share their unique insights and bring new perspectives to the company’s work culture.
3. Enhance Technical Knowledge
Experienced employees, despite having vast experience on a particular project or product, may not be familiar with recent tech trends. The newly graduated employees would be assisted with their cutting-edge technical expertise through knowledge-sharing sessions. By implementing reverse mentoring and arranging knowledge-sharing sessions, management can initiate a diverse work environment where new hires can share their technical expertise and accept projects and related knowledge from old product experts.
4. Share Digital Skill
Reverse mentoring is a powerful tool for bridging the generation gap in the workplace. While less-experienced workers may have limited project skills, they are often well-versed in the latest technical knowledge and trends. The practice creates a valuable opportunity for experienced employees to learn and adapt to the new tech landscape, fostering a sense of unity and shared learning.
Challenges of Reverse Mentoring
Though the practices of reverse mentoring create a bridge within generational gap and introducing mutual learnings within workplace, often it becomes a bane for the workforce improvement. When a youngster comes on the stage for sharing some knowledge with the experienced experts, it may lead to tension and misunderstanding between employees of different ages and experience level. Besides, experienced employees might feel undervalued and worry about being outdone by the new members. Therefore before, introducing the practices, it is essential for every employer to understand work environment and promote an unbiased and positive work environment.
