Tell participants what to do for long-term mentoring
What will you ask mentees and mentors to do as part of long-term mentoring?
After you have provided sufficient time for speed mentoring – around 4 to 8 weeks – you should remind participants what they need to do next as part of the programme.
You will have already decided how you want your long-term mentoring arrangements to work when you designed your programme earlier.
This email will need to tell participants how they move from a speed mentoring interaction to a long-term interaction.
Examples of the emails you could send are provided below.
Example
Long-term mentoring email to mentors
This document contains a template you could use to send to mentors, telling them what to expect after speed mentoring has concluded.
Example
Long-term mentoring email to mentees
This document contains a template you could use to send to mentees, telling them to select a long-term mentor.
Case study
Civil Service LGBT+ mentoring programme
For the Civil Service LGBT+ mentoring programme, each mentee was matched with up to 3 mentors for speed mentoring. Mentees were given 4 weeks to hold their sessions. Mentees were told that they could either use this speed mentoring session to:
- get a one-off piece of guidance or advice from each mentor, or
- explore whether each of their mentors were suitable matches for a longer-term mentoring arrangement
After the speed mentoring was complete, mentees were asked to select one of their speed mentors to approach as a long-term mentor. This long-term mentor then worked with their mentee for up to 12 months; meeting them for an hour every 4 to 8 weeks.