Question: What tools and materials are needed to support the mentoring program for CIPD

Organisation: Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development

Background: The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the representative body for the HR and training profession in the UK. It has 140,000 members in the UK and across the world. CMI has supported the CIPD in recent years with two programme: one for new entrants to the HR profession, either taking or having recently taken their professional qualification; and one for aspiring HR directors.

Project description: The career development mentoring programme, delivered with Coach Mentoring (our CMI UK partner) aims to support CIPD members.

At the end of 2014, the CIPD wanted to launch a pilot mentoring programme with a view to supporting their career development offering. The programme's objectives were to support CIPD members in:

Gaining their first role in HR

Making a transition in their next role to another area of HR

Gaining a promotion in HR role

The requirements were to run the scheme virtually to enable a broad access and to gather feedback and evaluation data with a view to rolling out the programme to more members.

The key areas where Coach Mentoring supported the CIPD were in:

Initial support to scope out the programme to meet the needs of the Careers Service

Interactive virtual training and supervision via WebEx for mentors and mentees

Matching of all pairs (50 to date)

Evaluation of the programme using both questionnaires and qualitative interviews and the preparation of an evaluation report

Feedback from the pilot was that all mentors would take part again as well as most of the mentees, and everyone would recommend the programme to their colleagues. There was also much useful data, which influenced the roll out of further mentoring within the CIPD Careers Service. This virtual programme is rolled out on an annual basis with over 90 mentoring pairs in 2017.

The aspiring directors programme had been a recommendation from CMI over several years. The transition from senior HR practitioner to HR director is complex and demanding. It is very difficult for someone, who has been managing a department within HR to prepare for a role that requires them to adopt a more strategic role as one of the leadership team. The pilot for the programme involved a marketing campaign, to recruit both mentors (highly experienced current HR directors) and mentees (senior professionals nominated by their own HR director as having the intention and ability to move into an HR director role within two years). Participants were matched from different sectors, to provide a breadth of learning.

Both mentors and mentees attended initial training, plus a follow up event to consolidate learning. We also provided webinar-based group supervision and access to other resources. In designing the programme, we took account of the special nature of mentoring potential directors - mentors were encouraged to reflect upon and share their thoughts around what was or would have been most helpful to them, in making this transition. Issues of especial importance were developing the mindset of a director and learning how to let go of operational responsibilities. Feedback from participants was that the programme had been both valuable and enjoyable for both mentors and mentees.