CT businesses test reverse mentoring

Reverse mentoring is helping some Connecticut companies do forward thinking when it comes to understanding the largely digital lives led by younger staff and customers and how that affects firms' businesses inside and outside office walls.

Reverse mentoring inverts the stereotypical vision of an experienced, older worker schooling a younger colleague. While that retains a vital role in the workplace, more companies are finding their younger staff have valuable lessons to share, too. And both parties — older mentees and younger mentors — are benefiting, learning something new about technology, communication and each other.

“I thought it was a good opportunity to network and connect with someone that I would not normally interact with on my day-to-day function and to meet someone new,” said Sheila Ginés, 34, a regulatory affairs specialist at Henkel Corp., who mentored a lawyer on digital tools. “We tried to make it more personal and what you can use on a day-to-day basis and its applicability and its advantages — so it was nice to be able to show that to someone who wasn't as exposed to it.”

That included teaching her mentee how to set up a video conference, something normally done by an assistant who was gone that day.

Henkel, a global company that makes adhesives, and laundry, home and beauty-care products and has its North American headquarters in Rocky Hill, earlier this year teamed 160 digitally talented mentors with 220 senior-manager mentees in 17 countries in one-to-one sessions (with some mentors helping more than one mentee) to expose managers to how their younger staff use digital tools. Afterward, 82 percent of mentors and 96 percent of mentees rated the reverse-mentoring experience good or very good and 80 percent of mentees wanted to continue the program on a regular basis.

UnitedHealthcare's commercial markets business launched reverse mentoring in the second quarter among 12 pairs of mentors and mentees and interest was significant, said Pete Church, vice president of human capital.

“This has taken off exponentially,” Church said from his Hartford office. “The demand for time and attention to explain what it is and how we're operationalizing it has really caught me off guard, quite candidly. There's a tremendous level of interest in the approach, there's interest in the kind of structure we've applied to it and we're actively and aggressively looking at ways we can not only scale it for ourselves to manage within our business for 2017, but also provide a playbook … or franchise it to other parts of the organization.”

Positive benefits

Reverse mentoring can build trust and loyalty in mentors while helping the mentees, said Lois Zachary, president of Leadership Development Services LLC and director of its Center for Mentoring Excellence in Phoenix, and author of multiple mentoring books, including “The Mentor's Guide.”

“In exchange for helping someone else, they get face time with an executive, they build a relationship they might not otherwise have had,” she said. “And it does build that kind of loyalty to the company because they feel heard and valued.”

And for older mentees, reverse mentoring is not just about learning about technology, she said.

“Reverse mentoring comes when you want to learn about a culture that's different than your own,” Zachary said.

Zachary sees more companies doing more mentoring in general as people acknowledge it as a leadership competency. Companies are creating mentoring cultures to sustain their mentoring programs and using it to advance strategic objectives, she said.

Connecticut roots

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, is credited with championing reverse mentoring in 1999.

Hearing about GE's initiative, The Hartford tried it several years ago, with senior leaders realizing they needed to be more fluent on social media and digital technologies to reach new customers and also to better understand the workplace needs of its Millennial staff, according to a 2013 report by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College, which in 2012 studied the impetus and early results of The Hartford's reverse mentoring.

The initiative resonated with employees of all ages, and mentors and mentees “reported having 'aha' moments and eye-opening ideas that led them to embark on new activities or conduct business in new ways,” the report said.

The Hartford was unable to arrange an interview for this story.

Mike Bott, 43, vice president-finance and treasurer at Henkel, said his 20-something mentor's use of digital technology confirmed how encompassing the technology was in his mentor's daily life.

“It gave me some things to think about in terms of how widespread it is and not only how we can use it within our team here, but also what it might do to shape Henkel's business in the future,” Bott said.

Internally, he was able to see how the company could leverage its digital tools to make projects and global interactions more efficient. The process also opened his eyes to how customers might be doing business and how Henkel's teams internally will need to be able to support that.

Another Henkel mentor, regulatory affairs specialist Rebecca Coons, 27, mentored a couple different executives, giving them a snapshot of her digital reliance in daily life and, by extension, the lives of others her age. She tried to open their minds to online marketing opportunities for Henkel products on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, for example.

“Instagram may seem like nothing, but Tide has Instagram, why can't we?” she said. “Hashtag Loctite, they used our glue to make something. That triggers somebody else. Where can we stick our brand?”

Facebook isn't just funny cat videos, Coons said, referencing serious articles on topics like climate change that her friends post.

“With all of it, I think it's how you utilize it and getting through the noise and actually focusing on how you want to use it for the company,” she said.

The reverse mentoring initiative supports Henkel's corporate, digital culture, said company spokeswoman Delker Vardilos.

Digitalization is one of the focus areas of Henkel's new strategy being unveiled for the next four years, so reverse mentoring is expected to be a key piece of that overall plan, she said.

Digitalization is the way everything is going, “just in terms of getting the brands out there,” Vardilos said.

Digital platforms will be increasingly important tools for engaging with consumers and capturing growth opportunities, she added.

John Preysner Jr., vice president and corporate attorney at Henkel, 61, saw the importance of LinkedIn to his mentor's engagement with the broader world and how his mentor avoided trivial online time-wasters.

“It was more really seeing how effective, serious and well done this tool is and how it can be very effective, serious and well done, not only for him in his branding but for us as a company because all of a sudden, we're getting eyeballs on our products through the use of LinkedIn,” Preysner said.

Preysner saw how someone looking for information on noncompete agreements, for example, would have people join the discussion and what a powerful business tool that was.

Millennial workers reflect customers

At UnitedHealthcare, the company realizes that to better address the needs of its diverse and changing membership, it has to better understand the diversity of its younger employees, how they live, work and communicate, Church said. The objective is for one to help the other, starting inside the office and ultimately benefiting members outside.

“I think one of the things that has allowed this to be successful has been the support of the senior leadership about knowing we need to try new things, we need to innovate to innovate,” Church said.

Benefits have included learning new communication tactics and deeper exposure to talent within the organization that typically doesn't surface during traditional annual review processes, he said.

UnitedHealthcare has tapped its emerging leaders to be mentors, allowing them to interact with one another in a way they typically wouldn't inside such a large organization, Church said.

“They form their own cohort group, they've begun to engage and interact with each other, they've had the experience of now walking in and shepherding meetings as if they are the C-suite leader, facing off against leaders that are three, four, sometimes five layers above them inside of an organization,” he said. “It's a heck of a social experiment, but more importantly than that it's a tremendous learning opportunity for both sides. It's adding value both at the individual and team level.”