The true meaning of appreciating diversity is to respect, empower and enjoy cultural and individual differences. The goal of a diversified organization is that people of all cultural backgrounds can achieve their full potential, without being limited by group identities such as gender, nationality, race or religion, values such as fairness, equality, fraternity.
In a broad definition, diversity issues include issues related to ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and sexual orientation of people and their employers in the workplace.
At the tactical level, the organization faces significant challenges in turning the diversity of its employees into an advantage.
The organizations that have best managed diversity to gain a competitive advantage have managed to turn these strategies and tactics into concrete actions:
- have a Management committed to valuing diversity, ongoing and robust diversity training programs, support groups for non-traditional workers, mentoring and learning programs, policies to accommodate diverse family needs, and communication policies that discourage discrimination. They intentionally develop an “organizational culture of diversity” systematizing activities and rituals that allow knowing and celebrating cultural differences.
Mentoring is a structured and trusting relationship that allows apprentices to meet with interested individuals who offer guidance, support and encouragement in order to develop the mentee's competencies, it is a time-tested strategy that can help people young people reach their potential. Mentors are interested individuals who provide people with support, advice, friendship, reinforcement, and a constructive example; mentors and mentees should share a close and trusting relationship
“The mentor is the one who teaches with concrete and clear actions how the values of a company are lived” “The first pillar of a mentor is to be an example to follow”.
According to Smith, the mentor can give advice to his apprentice but cannot interfere in the decisions that the boss makes regarding the person.
For Abascal, a mentor should not give advice, on the contrary, he should ask the pertinent questions so that the apprentice reaches his own conclusions if not "there is no process of true awareness."
Many mentoring programs prefer to match mentees with mentors who come from similar backgrounds racially, socioeconomically, and so on. This is often not possible and mentors are paired with young people who may look and act very different from what they are or do and whose backgrounds and lifestyles may be different from their own.
The mentor to understand and direct his apprentice must be immersed in the knowledge of his culture, in this sense, it is more than race or ethnicity. This encompasses values, lifestyle and social norms and includes aspects such as different styles of communication, ways of dressing, family structure, traditions, time orientation, and response to authority. These differences may be associated with age, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background.
Lack of understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity can result in mentors starting to make judgments, which can prevent the development of a trusting relationship.
Presumably, the MENTORS must be the oldest and most qualified in the company in their respective areas, in addition to having the ability and attitude to relate to his or her apprentices, motivate them without taking into account differences in race, gender, social attitudes. and lifestyles, for this you must talk with your apprentice about their antecedents and ancestors, about what life was like at school or at home or with their friends and thereby find the factors that influence your apprentice to act accordingly. Along with the values of the company and develops in it, the mentor must maintain effective and constant communication with the human resources department about the progress and achievements of the apprentice.
There are program practices that are essential for strong and effective mentoring relationships, these practices are:
- Conduct a reasonably intensive review of potential mentors Match based on shared interests of mentor and mentee Offer training and support after matching
The type of mentoring program to be determined will shape the structure and operation of the program; including the goals to be achieved with the mentoring program, the length and frequency of mentor engagement required, and the types of activities that will take place.
- Traditional one-on-one mentoring. Group mentoring. Group mentoring involves an adult mentor forming a relationship with a group of up to four young people. Team mentoring. Team mentoring involves multiple adults working with small groups of young people, with an adult-to-youth ratio no greater than 1: 4. Peer mentoring. Peer mentoring provides the opportunity for an interested youth to develop a mentoring and teaching relationship with a younger person. Electronic mentoring (also known as online mentoring, or tele-mentoring). Electronic mentoring connects an adult with a young person.
The elements that constitute a mentoring program are:
1. Program design and planning
That is the first and most important element in the construction of the program, since it is the outline that will be followed to carry out all the other aspects of the program. When you have completed the design and planning, you have already analyzed:
- The population to be served, the type of mentoring your program will offer, and the nature of the mentoring sessions; types of individuals to be recruited as mentors (e.g., senior citizens, corporate employees, college students); the goals of the program and expected outcomes for mentors, mentees, and sponsoring organizations; when and how often mentors and mentees will meet; how long the mentoring pairs are expected to last; the purposes of the mentoring program (e.g., socialization, academic support, work / career counseling); the location where the mentoring program will take place (e.g., faith-based site, community organization, school / university, workplace); the internal clients of the program; the how to promote the program;the best way to evaluate the progress and success of your program; a protocol to ensure that your program staff regularly contact mentors and mentees to discuss how their relationships are going.
2. Program management
Extremely important that the mentoring program is well managed. A well-managed program promotes accuracy and efficiency, establishes credibility and allows you to effectively measure progress and identify areas of opportunity within it, a solid plan to manage your program should include the following elements:
- An advisory group A comprehensive system for mentoring program information A resource development plan to obtain funding from multiple sources A system for monitoring the program Strategies for staff development Effective public relations and advocacy efforts communication.
3. Program operations
Efficient daily operations are important to the success of the mentoring program. The fulfillment of responsibilities by the people involved in the program will largely mean its success, clear and confusing expectations, motivation and passivity.
Operational functions:
- Recruit mentors, mentees, and other volunteers Select potential mentors and mentees Provide guidance and training for mentors, mentees, and parents / guardians Create mentor-mentee pairs Gather mentors and mentees for activities and sessions that coincide with the parameters of the established program Support, supervision and monitoring of mentoring relationships Recognition of contributions from all program participants Help mentors and mentees to reach closure
4. Program evaluation
Continual quality improvement is a hallmark of effective mentoring programs.
How successful you are in serving learners depends on how accurately you evaluate the success of your program and identify areas for improvement.
You will need to set the following:
- A plan to accurately measure program processes A process to measure whether expected results have occurred A process that reviews evaluation results and disseminates them to the right people.
The design and planning stage of the program allows us to create a process that will tell us how the mentoring program will be managed, implemented and evaluated. It should be noted that the plan can be modified as it progresses, as circumstances and experiences dictate.
1. Define the young population that the program will serve. Based on the results of the needs assessment, you are able to identify certain characteristics about the learners that your program will serve.
Other factors to consider:
- Age, Gender, Need for mentoring, Common characteristics.
Mentors are essential in opening the doors of education to all of our fellow citizens. Unfortunately these efforts are carried out with limited human and financial resources. The debates focused on the best strategies to incorporate mentors to the programs within the organizations are still in force and some of them due to lack of investment or follow-up are lost or strengthened, which is why few institutions develop sustained successful programs.
If programs that seek diversity do not take off or fail, the entire educational system is in jeopardy; For this reason, it is important to examine the models of educational guardianship and their influence when incorporating diversity into the educational system based on a prior analysis of the objectives that are intended to be achieved with the mentoring programs and that this is consistent with the objectives of the company so that there is no disagreement and can remain current throughout the organizational development.
