Also read: mentoring, DiversityIncBestPractices.com

This is the first of a three-part series on mentoring from DiversityIncBestPractices.com. The other parts include mentoring case studies and mentoring statistics. Click here to view DiversityInc's webinar on mentoring. A full library of DiversityInc's webinars can be found by clicking here.

Why do talented people--especially women, Blacks, Asians and Latinos--leave corporate America? Several studies show that even before the current economic crisis they felt that they weren't going to get promoted and that opportunities were limited. With the recession making the potential for promotion even more limited, they feel even more powerless.

What's the antidote? Strong mentoring programs that develop sustainable bidirectional relationships and appreciate cross-cultural communications. These programs must have structure, formal follow-up and measurable results.

To give you best practices, DiversityInc identified the 10 top mentoring programs from the 352 companies that participated in The 2008 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® survey. Those companies are (with their 2008 DiversityInc Top 50 rank): Bank of America, No. 3; PricewaterhouseCoopers, No. 4; Johnson & Johnson, No. 8; IBM, No. 9; American Express, No. 10; Deloitte LLP, No. 16; Ernst & Young, No. 17; KeyBank, No. 33; Abbott, No. 37; and Rockwell Collins, one of DiversityInc's 25 Noteworthy Companies in 2008. We surveyed them to find out how their mentoring programs work, and in this three-part series, we'll share their responses.

Click here to read "Career Advice From a 58-Year-Old Recession Survivor."

Click here to read "What Are 4 Ways to Get Your Online Résumé Noticed?"

Click here to read "4 Things NEVER to Say to Someone Who Just Lost a Job."

In this part, we'll give you examples of best practices you can implement. In next week's featured article, we'll show you how they get specific results and what the metrics on mentoring show. And in the third part, we'll give you real-life personal examples of people who have been mentored (and have mentored others) and tell you how it changed their careers and their lives.

Click here for information on our webinar on mentoring.

The Benefits of Mentoring

What do Latinas and Black and Asian women cite as the greatest barrier to corporate success? A lack of mentoring. Catalyst's "Women of Color in Corporate Management" survey found that 48 percent of them cited "not having an influential mentor or sponsor" as their greatest impediment, while 33 percent cited "lack of role models in my racial/ethnic group."

A University of Pennsylvania study of more than 1,000 employees at a large tech company over five years found that those enrolled in mentoring programs (as both mentors and mentees) were promoted at six times the rate of those who were not enrolled. And those in the mentoring program had retention rates of 72 percent on average, compared with 49 percent for those not in the program.

A National Black MBA Association survey of 2,875 Black managers found that they valued mentoring at almost double the rate of effective performance feedback.

5 Mentoring Best Practices

• No. 1: Use Formal, Structured Programs
  

  American Express has formal programs including New Hire Mentoring, in which each new hire is assigned a peer mentor who explains tasks and responsibilities and serves as a sounding board. The mentors help create an on-boarding roadmap, which outlines a course of knowledge for the first six months on the job. Another formal program is the Professional Development Program, in which employees are mentored and trained to help them grow professionally and personally.

  IBM has three formal major mentoring categories. Expert Mentoring helps employees acquire specific technical, business, functional and leadership skills. Career Mentoring addresses long-term career development and succession planning. Socialization Mentoring helps new hires adjust.

  At Abbott, the formal mentoring program offers employees the chance to partner with another employee in a structured year-long developmental partnership. Using a web-based program, protégés and mentors are matched based on qualities, competencies and experiences they want.

  At Rockwell Collins, a web-based matching tool is used to enable all salaried employees to be a mentor, a mentee or both. Senior leadership also has directed matches for those who were identified with real leadership potential.

  These all benefit from measurable goals, which 100 percent of the top mentoring companies have, compared with 88 percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies and just 48 percent of the bottom quarter of the 352 participants in last year's survey.

• No. 2: Use Informal Mentoring

  These companies also encourage informal mentoring, especially through employee-resource groups. All of them have strong, active groups used for recruitment and then to retain and develop talent.

  At Abbott, for example, the company often holds networking events, using its employee groups, to encourage informal mentoring. "Mentoring supports our inclusive culture in that it exposes participants to a diversity of thought, experience, education, culture, management and personal styles," the company says.

  At IBM, informal mentoring includes speed mentoring, group mentoring and instant one-on-one mentoring.

• No. 3: Make Mentoring Cross-Cultural

  Almost all of our top mentoring companies encourage participants to find mentors who are both from their group (whether that's defined by race, ethnicity, religion, age, orientation or ability) and not from their group. Employee-resource groups are often used to give them access to mentors within their own groups and across groups.

• No. 4: Measure Success and Follow-Up

  All of these companies have formal metrics to assess the success of the participants. At IBM, success is measured by skills development, retention and engagement (employee surveys). At American Express, employee-engagement scores are used to rank personal development as well as retention rates and turnover for new hires, especially. Rockwell Collins tracks overall participation.

  Another valuable way to track success is to measure who gets promoted after being in a mentor program. We'll have more on this next week, but consider this: Of the DiversityInc top mentoring programs, 16 percent of senior managers (CEO and direct reports) were Black, Latino or Asian, compared with 14 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 and just 8 percent of the bottom quarter. And keep in mind that these are companies self-selecting as diversity leaders, so national averages would be much lower if the EEOC or any other organization correlated data this way. Even more interestingly, 21 percent of female senior managers were Black, Latina or Asian in the top mentoring companies, compared with 17 percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 and 8 percent of the bottom quarter of participants.

• No. 5: Publicize the Benefits of Mentoring Programs

  IBM says it best: "Through the mentoring activities, the IBM workplace is deemed one where collaborative and ongoing learning is taking place across the globe. Many of the cross geography has helped to bridge cultural gaps and at the same connect employees in emerging and growth countries with mentors in mature organizations. As employees develop their individual capability, they are in a culture that thrives on sharing knowledge."