A mentoring platform for the government sector

Problem statement

Research shows that 1 in 5 employees who leave a government organization is under 35 years old. These employees often leave due to a lack of career prospects and career opportunities. Young officials often lack guidance and support from their managers, which can lead to feelings of uncertainty and lack of direction. This contributes to a high turnover rate among young officials, which in turn results in reduced productivity and higher costs for recruiting and training new employees.

MentorConnector offers a solution by connecting young and new officials with experienced officials, administrators and government professionals. This helps them to increase their self-confidence, improve their performance and increase their job satisfaction. The program means that “mentees” (young officials and side entrants) are matched with experienced mentors. In addition, the mentoring program is facilitated in such a way that it runs smoothly and in a structured way, without requiring too much capacity from your own organization.

Requirements

Based on our experience in internally matching talent at the municipality of Lochem, Rebecca Heye from MentorConnector approached us to develop a user-friendly mentoring platform. When developing this platform, it is crucial that the number of actions for both mentor and mentee to participate in the program is kept to a minimum. It is also important to streamline manual processes and gain insight into the results of the program.

Solution

In order to be able to offer the mentoring program on a large scale and in an accessible way, the solution lies in the development of a digital platform. The focus here is on establishing a suitable 'match' between mentor and mentee. In addition, supporting matters, such as a partnership agreement and tools, are offered to further structure the program. As a result, a cross-organizational mentoring program can be efficiently facilitated, without having to constantly be busy with administrative activities such as developing and sending profiles.

Actionable emails

Constantly logging into a platform to perform a specific action is not ideal for both the mentor and the mentee and is often impersonal. That is why it has been made possible to carry out actions via interactive emails and pages, in a personal and accessible way. So participants don't have to log in separately for each action. This is in line with MentorConnector's personal approach.

Outcome

The platform has now been launched and various local and regional government organizations are using the platform. MentorConnector will first focus on increasing the number of affiliated government organizations and expanding the mentor database. Subsequently, the program will be further supported with additional tools and additional products and services.