Time for personal learning & reflection. The opportunity to work with someone more experienced and who is an independent third party. Focus on current work issues, personal development and long-term career progression and can provide enhanced organization and sector awareness as well as access to wider networks. Mentors can help to increase competence and confidence building and help with challenging issues. Mentoring sessions provide space to test ideas in a risk-free environment and gain authentic feedback from someone you can trust.
There are several benefits for those who become mentors. These include the mentor being given the opportunity to create and transfer a common set of leadership/cultural standards, passing on their acquired knowledge and experience to help others and supporting a learning culture that contributes to business performance. Mentoring also contributes to the mentor’s own development and offers the opportunity to ‘give something back’ to the organisation and its employees.
There are many ‘business benefits’ to mentoring. Through mentoring, employees may feel more valued which will assist in recruitment and retention. Mentoring is also a low-cost but highly effective way to develop employees and to strengthen the psychological contract. An employer that is willing and able to support its female staff, through mentoring, is also more likely to attract female applicants. This is especially important in the aviation and aerospace industry, where women are so poorly represented yet offer a key source of skills for the industry.
Skills shortages remain a feature of the aviation and aerospace sector, in the UK, Europe and globally. Despite this, organisations are not fully utilising their existing talent, especially their female talent, which is borne out in the official statistics. Women’s employment in engineering has increased, but remains low at 16.5% (UK Engineering 2021) while just 5.5% of commercial pilots in the UK are women (Civil Aviation Authority, 2022). Despite their proven abilities in the industry, negative views remain about women in male dominated industries and organisations, which is evidenced through our own research with women in the industry.
