Workplace Equity Highlight: Employ Milwaukee
May 15, 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 our new resource. Becoming a Better Mentor: Strategies To Be There For Young People.
May 30, 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. We are highlighting and celebrating our workplace partners that are evolving their culture to include relationship-centered practices. This blog features Employ Milwaukee, a local workforce development board serving Milwaukee County that partnered with MENTOR Greater Milwaukee to provide structured mentoring training to supervisors and youth with the goal of creating positive work experiences for young people that lead to retention and career growth.
With funding from the Schultz Family Foundation, MENTOR developed and launched Connect | Focus | Grow, a training curriculum that employs a three-pronged approach – to equip mentors with skills to effectively support the personal and professional growth of young people, to coach supervisors on how to manage with a mentoring mindset, and to guide young people towards engaging and leveraging mentoring opportunities while, at the same time, meeting their goals. The goal of Connect | Focus | Grow is to create a mentoring mindset for industry professionals to increase positive outcomes for youth and jobseekers that have traditionally been overlooked as potential candidates in career growth opportunities.
As a MENTOR Affiliate, MENTOR Greater Milwaukee participated in training to deliver Connect | Focus | Grow and partnered with Employ Milwaukee to help them adjust their approach to include structured mentoring training for supervisors. Because of the partnership with MENTOR Greater Milwaukee, Employ Milwaukee reached over 600 youth, providing training to both young people and supervisors.
Employ Milwaukee President and CEO Chytania Brown says, “We recognize that young people are not only our future but also our present. We count it a privilege to help onboard young people into the workforce to secure valuable work experience, earn income at an early age, and grow in the process of stewardship of their lives. This is best achieved through intentionality to ensure success and we see that through linking mentoring into our workforce development efforts.”
MENTOR Greater Milwaukee’s reach in mentoring and workforce development was extended in March 2022 when the City of Milwaukee announced that all city employees will get paid time off from work to mentor. Executive Director of MENTOR Greater Milwaukee, LaNelle Ramey, said, “We are excited about the partnership established with the City of Milwaukee allowing its employees time off to mentor in the community. When you think about reimagining mentoring, what is the most critical element? How do we support our young people? We support them by giving them a caring adult on their side. We are excited for this partnership as one solution to supporting our young people in their growth and development.”