Successful organizations use formal mentoring programs to train their staff and ensure that the knowledge and skills of the organization are retained, Holland College staff members Gerry Seaward and Reg Berringer said in their presentation to the Human Resources Association of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (HRANS) recently.

“In every organization, there is a unique gold mine of learning and experience that employees have developed over the years. Known as ‘deep knowledge’, these are valuable assets of experienced employees that could be lost if a formal mentoring program is not in place,” explained Berringer, who teaches mentoring at Holland College and the college’s Atlantic Police Academy in Summerside.

The success of a formal mentoring program has been evident at Holland College since 2005, when Gerry Seaward, Manager, Instructional Development and HR specialist Jane Ford first introduced it for new employees.

“The evidence of success is found in the positive feedback we have received from everyone in the program over the past thee years,” explained Gerry Seaward, Holland College Manager of Instructional Development.

Deep knowledge includes information about what makes a business unique, what strategies worked in the past and what lessons have been learned over the years. It also includes all the unwritten rules and procedures that make things run smoothly in the real world. Often these skills cannot be learned in a classroom or short seminar format.

Holland College has mentoring classes for internal staff participating in the Peer to Peer Mentoring program and a Mentoring the Adult Learner course that is open to the public as part of the joint University of Prince Edward Island/Holland College Certificate in Adult Education program.