“Especially early career, when you’re the only woman or you tend to stand out a little bit more … it made me a little bit more hesitant to speak out,” she says. “When you’re hesitant to speak out and you feel like your voice isn’t being heard, that can cause some retention issues and that can make it more difficult to continue in the space. So having a mentor or having other people that are allies and able to call you out in meetings to make sure that your voice is heard and make you feel just generally more comfortable will help with that.”

Guiding Career Progression

Naeve’s own career path was heavily influenced by mentors. Directly after finishing her undergrad degree in mechanical engineering, she was faced with a difficult decision: She had already secured a full-time job at a Fortune 100 company, but she had the opportunity to purse a master’s degree in engineering in China.

Naeve leveraged several of her mentors as a sounding board to gain different vantage points on how this decision would affect her career, which ultimately led her to pursue the degree.

“Careers aren’t even linear. They never go as you expect, but it really is helpful to establish a goal, like, ‘Where do I want to be in five years?’ Because then at least by mapping it out, you’re able to take incremental steps to where you think you’re going to land or where you aspire to land,” Naeve says. “It could pivot, but at least you know you’re making progress. That’s been the most helpful for me.”

As Naeve progressed in her career and became a mentor herself, she was able to use her experience at companies like John Deere, Caterpillar and DuPont to shape the career plans of her mentees—similar to how her mentors provided guidance early in her own career.

Naeve once had a mentee in research and development who wanted to learn more about the day-to-day work of different types of jobs she could pursue in the future. For about a month, Naeve and her mentee would talk in-depth weekly about what future job opportunities might look like, giving her visibility into potential career plans.

Becoming More Competitive

Mentorship opportunities don’t just help the individual; they can also empower and strengthen the company overall, says Naeve. Companies that offer effective mentorship programs can not only expect to see higher retention rates but develop a leadership pipeline through increased engagement and a larger network within the company.

Additional research suggests that having more women in leadership positions can yield a positive ROI.

The 2023 McKinsey report Diversity Matters Even More, which analyzed data from 1,265 companies, found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 39% more likely to financially outperform their peers in the bottom quartile.

“Especially in large corporations, I think, where businesses or functions might be a little bit siloed, it's another way to connect people across businesses that will drive returns in the future,” Naeve says. “I know from my own experience, I had been able to leverage people in different businesses, and you really get a different perspective just by having these programs.”

Implementing an Effective Program

Mentorship can come in many forms (informal vs. formal; executive vs. production floor; same company vs. cross-company), but the key to making these programs successful is intentionality.

“Where we see programs fail is when [a company] says ‘[Mentorship] is an employee benefit, a program we’re supporting,’ but then people aren’t given the time to participate,” Grealis says.

“I’ve seen some leaders have open hours or office hours where younger professionals can seek out time with them,” she adds. “I know one senior leader in manufacturing who, for example, when she travels to her facilities all throughout the globe, she always asks to have some time with the women in the facility to have just an open forum for them to ask questions, to ask for guidance.”

Different manufacturing positions necessitate different forms of mentorship, something to be mindful of when creating programs in your own organization, says Naeve.

“There’s a unique challenge across the board in the skilled trades. There’s typically less flexibility within the hours a lot of times,” Naeve says. “Mentorship within that, of course, is going to look a little bit different than it does in the corporate space … Skilled trades might be more hands-on, working really closely together.”

Grealis has seen mentorship for women in production roles be “even more impactful.”

“For our Women in Production program, we’ve graduated nearly 1,000 people from that program,” she says, “what we find is most of them have never had access to professional training, assessments, coaching, mentorship.”

Training the Mentors

Investing in mentor training and guidance to ensure they are well-equipped to listen to and empower their mentees is also a critical measure.

“Sometimes people can be really skilled and really good at what they do; it doesn’t mean they’re going to be a really good mentor. So, seeking out people that are good listeners and are very personable to be mentors and help develop the mentees I think is also important,” Naeve says.

A general outline for mentor-mentee meetings should be part of a mentorship program strategy, as it provides guidance and can create a logical flow for conversations, especially for first-time mentors.

“When it’s a formal mentorship program, it’s helpful to have some structure.,” Naeve says. “You don’t want to lay out every 10 minutes of the meeting of what you’re going to talk about because it can be very dynamic, but give a high-level outline of ideas you might want to talk about during each meeting, so that there’s just a general structure. People can choose to follow it. They might not. But especially if people aren’t trained and don’t have a lot of experience in that area, it can really be helpful to facilitate better and deeper conversations.”

When recruiting mentors, Grealis says that companies should emphasize that the role is meaningful and rewarding.

“I think to share that, as they’re recruiting mentors for the program, there’s dual benefit to participating in creating these programs,” Grealis says. “It’s not just on the mentee side gaining expertise and guidance from the more senior people. Likewise, senior individuals can have huge benefits from participating as a mentor.”

“I think that’s one of the big misconceptions about mentorship in general is that it’s one-directional, because it’s not,” adds Naeve. “Even as a mentor for my mentees, I’ve been able to learn a lot through that experience from them because they are looking through a different lens, and that helps me to look at things differently.

“I think it’s fun because especially now with automation … and AI really taking off, leadership can actually learn a ton from the younger generation coming into the field. So, I think there’s a really strong case for this bidirectional mentorship.”

As companies consider mentorship as part of workforce development initiatives, Grealis and Naeve underscore the importance of workforce development for the individual, companies and the industry as a whole.

“I think it’s all of our duty to think of the people that come behind us,” Grealis says. “I would encourage leaders in the industry to think about, ‘How are you spending some portion of your time thinking about the next generation of leadership and talent?’”