Workplace Equity: Enhancing Career Mentoring through Policy
May 9, 2022
Are you interested in doing or learning more? Take MENTOR’s Workplace Equity Pledge to further workplace equity for young people. Here are four actions you can take: 1. Advocate: encourage your Congressional Representatives to support the Youth Workforce Readiness Act. 2. Learn: watch MENTOR’s training on bringing a Mentoring Mindset to the workplace 3. Elevate: download our resource on the power of workplace mentoring and share it with your company’s DEI committee. 4. Explore: Download MENTOR’s new resource, Becoming a Better Mentor: Strategies To Be There For Young People.
May 9, 2022
MENTOR believes that all young people need access to caring adults and mentors in their family, community, schools, and in the workplace to achieve their personal and professional goals. Having a champion in the workplace can make or break a young worker’s experience. For our Workplace Equity Campaign, we are sharing stories across sectors explaining the importance of career mentoring. In this piece, MENTOR’s Policy Manager, Caden Fabbi, outlines our advocacy work related to supporting young workers.
Throughout history, mentoring has been a key strategy to support youth in career exploration and early employment experiences. Mentoring, both in and out of the traditional workplace, provides social-emotional support, networking and social capital, and hands-on and “soft” skill development that can lead to youth discovering a field that leads to career advancement, job satisfaction, and economic success.
The pandemic and economic volatility of the past few years has made intentional relationships in the workplace more important than ever. Young people are entering an increasingly competitive workforce feeling unprepared and uncertain. Mentors are particularly impactful at this moment, particularly for young people facing marginalization who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, such as youth with disabilities,[1] youth of color,[2] and youth identifying as female,[3] all of whom are often underrepresented in industries such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).[4]
MENTOR’s advocacy work in this space is centered on a research-informed belief that relationships lead to higher satisfaction for both the employee and employer. A recent study by MENTOR of mentoring relationships within workforce development settings for young adults found that almost 90% of those mentored young adults were retained in their jobs for over 90 days, a huge jump over historical retention averages. The same study found that 72% of participants felt their mentors helped them determine the next steps on their career or educational journey.[5] The mentoring movement believes that replicating successful mentoring models and best practices both within and outside of the workplace will lead to more positive job experiences and stronger economic outcomes for young people.
MENTOR advocates for policies that will deepen and expand relationships in order to meet the needs of both employers and the nation’s young people:
- The Youth Workforce Readiness Act (H.R. 3342/S. 1696) is a key piece of MENTOR’s legislative platform. The bill would establish a funding stream specifically for out-of-school time (OST) providers to do workforce development programming for young people. Grantees of this program would be required to implement adult mentoring for each young person’s entire period of participation and a subsequent period afterward, with additional mentoring through local industry or sector partnerships to provide career exposure, exploration, and planning. You can take action now in support of this bill here.
- MENTOR advocates for several changes within the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Action (WIOA), including:
- Expanding youth voice by allowing youth to serve on local workforce development boards;
- Reserving significant allocations of funding for “opportunity” or “at-risk” youth, with additional funding for direct financial assistance to eligible youth engaged in WIOA programs;
- Requiring any staff that come into contact with eligible youth undergo trauma-informed and equitable service delivery training, especially for those who have been adversely affected as a result of race, ethnicity, or gender;
- Increasing reporting of WIOA program outcomes to include if youth felt supported by the employer and if they envision a career pathway based on the job experience;
- Referring any technical assistance for employers, programs, or staff who will be mentoring youth in these settings to the National Mentoring Resource Center;
- Requiring entities applying for reentry employment opportunity funding to describe how they would incorporate mentoring and relationships into their project.
- Another piece of MENTOR’s legislative platform is the Opening Doors for Students Act (H.R. 4403), which would provide summer or year-round employment programs for young people and require them to offer mentoring for-eligible youth, as well as coaching and mentoring services for employers to successfully retain them.
- MENTOR supports authorizing long-standing programs such as YouthBuild and Reentry Employment Opportunities, which implement mentoring and relationships into their programming.
- MENTOR advocates for public funding to support partnerships between schools, employers, and community-based organizations for training, mentoring, and work-based learning experiences, in addition to further research on best practices of career and workplace mentoring to enhance the research base.
With the unprecedented and unique youth and employer needs of today, mentoring programs across the country are stepping up to emphasize career exploration and planning in their programming. As such, MENTOR will continue to urgently advocate for funding and partnerships so that every young person entering the workplace has the relationships and social capital they need to thrive.
[1] Lindsay, S., L, R. H., & Fellin, M. (2016). A systematic review of mentorship programs to facilitate transition to postsecondary education and employment for youth and young adults with disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation, 38(14), 1329–1349. doi:10. 3109/09638288.2015.1092174
[2] Bird, W., Martin, M., Tummons, J., & Ball, A. (2013). Engaging students in constructive youth-adult relationships: A case study of urban school-based agriculture students and positive adult mentors. Journal of Agricultural Education, 54(2), 29–43. doi:10.5032/jae.2013.02029
[3] Stoeger, H., Hopp, M., & Ziegler, A. (2017). Online mentoring as an extracurricular measure to encourage talented girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics): An empirical study of one-on-one versus group mentoring. Gifted Child Quarterly, 61, 239–249. doi:10.1177/0016986217702215
[4] Gamse, B. C., Martinez, A., Bozzi, L., & Didriksen, H. (2014). Defining a research agenda for STEM Corps: Working white paper. Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates
[5] Alexandre-Joseph, C., Garringer, M., Suri, S., & Fiori, S. (2021). Final report of the National Mentoring Project, 2020-2021. Boston, MA: MENTOR.