Diversity and inclusion – how mentoring can help your organisation

Delivered in partnership with leading mentoring platform providers PushFar, our new mentoring programme opens the door to a world of opportunities so our members can be the best they can be. In today's blog, we explore how mentoring can help build diversity and inclusion in your organisation. 

There are a huge number of ways in which you can help your organisation, company, charity or venture to get behind diversity and inclusion. There are groups you can form, industry-wide networks you can join, diversity consultants you can engage with, employee forums you can hold and a huge number of additional things your organisation should look to do to. One such way in which you can help with diversity and inclusion is mentoring. And it’s this that, at PushFar, what we’re passionate about. Mentoring.

For those of you who are not yet aware, PushFar is one of the world’s most advanced yet easy-to-use platforms to help individuals and organisations with mentoring and career progression. We have thousands of people engaging with PushFar and the technologies we have built, and indeed continue to build upon. But today we wanted to specifically discuss mentoring within diversity and inclusion groups and share just some of the reasons why it is particularly important here-

Mentoring, as PushFar defines it, is the act of one individual helping another individual. That’s it! Career or professional mentoring is just the same but revolves around one individual helping another individual in their career. Simple really. Yet, there are thousands of organisations who still aren’t offering mentoring to their employees. Mentoring can be incredibly rewarding for those who offer to mentor others and is an invaluable resource for those receiving mentoring - mentees. We all learn from speaking to colleagues and friends and surrounding ourselves with likeminded individuals who can relate to us. Mentoring is a big part of this, but it is particularly important for those who perhaps do not always feel entirely included in company culture or in some cases feel isolated. Whether this be a perceived feeling of exclusivity or a wider company issue, mentoring is a first step towards helping face this challenge. Fortunately, we live in a society where inclusivity is something that organisations are becoming more and more aware of.

Our CEO and co-founder, Ed Johnson, who is openly gay, says “In my first job I was openly gay with friends and family, but it took me several months to actually feel able to be myself in work. I was part of a company of more than 50 employees but as far as I was aware, I was the only gay employee. It wasn’t until I finally came out to colleagues that I realised there was someone else gay in the office who was in a similar situation to me. Had there been some sort of support network or mentoring scheme I am certain there would have been less of a problem here.” Having mentoring schemes is so incredibly vital to allowing employees to feel able to speak their mind and express themselves. While having a manager is part of this, having a mentor can often act as a secondary support and someone individuals feel more able to be direct with if there is no line-management conflict or concern of judgement but simply that support.

Mentoring can empower employees to develop themselves, their careers and navigate through the increasingly challenging workplaces we face today. Whether in expressing concerns about diversity and inclusion, speaking to others in a similar position or discussing career progression prospects, we would urge all organisations out there to look at setting up mentoring programmes.

Read more on PushFar's website.

If you're a CIH member and would like to started with PushFar, you need to be logged in to MyCIH* before visiting our mentoring page where you can register to use the mentoring programme. You can then take a few minutes to update your profile before you explore and get familiar with the programme!

*Members who have not created a MyCIH profile will need to do so with the email address on their profile. It is only once this is done that you will be able to access the platform and your correct profile.