Solving Employee Turnover with Mentorship

By / Sheralyn Belyeu • Photos courtesy of International Training Institute

Employee turnover isn’t just an inconvenience. Turnover eats into profits by limiting productivity while pushing up hiring and retraining costs. At the 2024 Partners in Progress Conference, Administrator of the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI) Lisa Davis and Recruitment and Retention Specialist for the International Training Institute (ITI) Tammy Meyen invited attendees to try the return on investment calculator at togetherplatform.com for a quick estimate of what turnover costs them every year. Depending on company size and average pay per employee, the estimates were eyepopping, ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars.

As high as these numbers look, the ROI calculator understates the impact of turnover in today’s tight job market. “We are at 1% unemployment in BC, so we have a hard time filling spots,” says Jake Jordan, business organizer for Local 276 in British Columbia.

Severe labor shortages force everyone to learn new skills. “People who were within two to five years of planned retirement pulled the plug early due to COVID-19, which left companies with employees filling spots before they had the usual experience or training,” says Tom Montgomery, owner and strategic executive with Hermanson Company. Montgomery is a past-trustee for Local 66, and past-president of SMACNA-Western Washington. “Younger people are being put on the fast track to fill the vacancies and voids left behind as the boomers retire or pass away. They need lessons that aren’t in textbooks.”

Leaders know that mentoring programs tackle labor costs by accelerating training, but they may not realize that mentoring also reduces the turnover that leads to those high costs in the first place. A major company described in the Knowledge at Wharton podcast found that “retention rates were much higher for mentees (72%) and mentors (69%) than for employees who did not participate in the mentoring program (49%).”

The sheet metal industry cannot afford to ignore the financial benefits of mentoring. Before building a mentoring program, leaders need to clarify goals and answer basic questions. “Plan before you start,” Meyen advises. “Otherwise, you’ll be backtracking.” Who will participate? Will there be training for mentors and mentees? Is the goal to attract and retain top talent? To increase engagement or diversity?

SMART provides free planning worksheets that locals and contractors can use to think through these and other issues. These documents are available on the SMART International Women’s Committee website. They are listed under Priorities/ Resources along with training materials, a 78-page PDF handbook on mentoring programs within unions, and a 204page PDF toolkit on how to build a mentoring program.

JATCs are logical places to start new mentoring programs because they are jointly managed and include every apprentice. Locals are often the best organizations to track the growth of individual members, but contractor buy-in is vital for success.

“A mentor might need time to work with mentees, a Zoom account, or space for meeting,” Meyen says. “Contractors have to be involved in the process.”

There are many ways to assign mentors, from casual conversations in the shop to hiring a professional matching service. One option is to ask apprentices who is already mentoring them.

“See who is mentioned more than once,” Davis says. “Ask those individuals if they know that they are seen as a mentor. If these natural mentors aren’t in a formal program, at least let them go through the training.”

Mentorship programs often focus on the needs of women and minorities who are entering the trade, but assignments can cross demographic lines. “I’ve had fantastic male and female mentors,” Davis says. “Relationships will evolve over time. Maybe at first, I really needed technical skills. Three years in, I might be thinking about bulding my career. Is my first mentor still the one I need?”

Mentoring should not be a burden. “A good mentor is not a parole officer or a parent,” Meyen says. “It can be as simple as checking up on someone through texts or having lunch together. Managing a mentorship program is a heavier responsibility.” Professional services like MentorshipMatters, based in Vancouver, TogetherPlatform, or Mentorloop, lighten the administrative load, but making assignments, training mentors, and tracking results will be time consuming. “If you ask someone to organize a mentoring program in their volunteer time, you might not get the results you expect,” Meyen says. “Running a mentoring program will usually be part of a formal assignment, and the program manager’s most important qualification should be caring about others.”

Montgomery runs a mentoring group in the Seattle area. He started by asking mentees what they wanted to gain from the program.

“Let them drive and lead,” he says. “Relationships are more successful if the mentees set the pace and the agenda versus a mentor trying to force-feed them something they may not be ready for.”

Small group discussions are central to his program. Every six weeks, emerging leaders from different companies join Montgomery for an hour or so of conversation. “Some of the best lessons have been exposing my mistakes to students,” he says. “You have to be vulnerable.”

Group topics have included general leadership lessons, personality tests like DISC or CliftonStrengths, and Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Several future meetings will feature guest speakers from the local sheet metal industry. After each discussion, the whole group moves to a nearby sports bar for a relaxed late lunch.

Seattle companies provide resources for Montgomery’s mentorship program because they that know that strong mentors increase profits in the long run.

“Whatever it costs to start a mentoring program,” Meyen says, “it’s paid for because of what it will save on turnover costs.”

Davis and Meyen’s Powerpoint presentation from the Partners in Progress 2024 Conference is available for download here ▪

On Listening

“Mentor training should at least touch on listening,” Meyen says. “Mentors will be more effective if they listen to hear instead of listening to speak.”

Listening is a neglected skill. In her Partners in Progress 2024 Conference keynote address, Victoria Labalme asked how many attendees had taken a listening skills workshop. Just a handful of leaders raised their hands, which Labalme said is typical. Only about 2% of executive leaders receive this training.

Angie Simon, past SMACNA president and executive director of Heavy Metal Summer Experience, is one of the few industry leaders with a listening skills workshop under her belt. “It was part of a leadership workshop that I had,” says Simon. “Listening is the number one skill leaders need to work on. Listening is a very powerful part of being a leader and mentoring.”

When she was doing one-on-ones with her young leadership, Simon would ask them within the first five minutes, “How’s the family?” and “What did you do this weekend?”

“I had notes on their challenges,” she says. “I didn’t want to talk any work; I wanted to talk all about them. We need to know each other as people.” She says listening is particularly important in a mentoring relationship. “There’s a lot more to life than work. Mentoring somebody is helping them learn how to deal with everything in life. It’s caring about people.” ▪

A Colorado native, Sheralyn Belyeu lives and writes deep in the woods of Alabama. When she’s not writing, she grows organic blueberries and collects misspellings of her name.