Make your employees point to the same goal, like a vector
We usually say that Mentor is an industry-wide tool, in fact, the more customers we get – the safer we become at this. Mentoring isn't about which industry you're in. It's about the people in the business.
Something that made us extra sure of this was when our partners Mattias Moutran Widegren and Christer Wikner at Vectorplan successfully implemented Mentor at The Academic Hospital in Uppsala in May 2017. The fact that the mentor tool, which was originally developed for sales departments, would end up at The Academic Hospital in Uppsala and be used by nurses, care assistants and doctors was a positive surprise that brought us closer to the path we are walking today – namely to implement Mentor in the public sector. We've known Vectorplan on the pulse and asked them what they see Mentor can do to help in the challenges that exist in our organizations today.
Mattias and Christer met when they were doing the lump – several years later, by pure chance, they met again at a joint job. Then they started talking about having to do something together. Two years ago, they decided to start Vectorplan, where they focus on helping organizations with strategy implementations – so all employees point to the same goal, like a vector.
The importance of a vector plan
"Common to managers in large companies is that they want to be seen and heard (also see and hear what is happening in the organization), just as all people want to be. However, it can be difficult to hear what everyone thinks and thinks, there are too many opinions. It is enough that five want to reconnect and it is already there for many. You send down directives to your employees as they should. But were the directives good? If you then look at the employees, they also want to be seen and heard as they are also human beings. Instead, you don't know how to speak up and get attention," says Mattias.
What needs do you see in organizations today?
"What we see is that the need to be seen and get feedback on their work is actually the same in both directions. Because we're no more than human beings. The communication in between – from the bottom up and from top to bottom, that's the communication we want to help with because we know from our experience that there are big challenges around that particular one out there. When we found Mentor, a digital tool that facilitates this communication, we immediately felt that it was something we wanted to work with.
Mentor is a brand new tool on the market that is unlike any other. When I myself worked as a manager, I can say that I wish I had had a tool like Mentor available. Mentoring is so simple and serves both those at the bottom and those at the top. Therefore, we have chosen to use Mentor as an aid in the organizations we support.
"What we're seeing is that middle managers may have the toughest role to master..."
What does the workload look like in the country?
"What we see is that middle managers may have the toughest role to master as they are both incredibly operational and should act as managers. Some have 20-30 employees or more under them. We also know that there are those managers who have far more than that and it is absolutely impossible to be a good leader with so many under them. How can you have good communication with your employees – when you have so many? Mentor helps managers spend less time on the type of interaction that takes place simply because the employee wants to be seen. One of the first reflections we received from a manager we worked with was that "I realize now that I don't have time set aside to be a manager". Our view is that unfortunately it looks like this in many organizations today," says Mattias.
Mattias says that when they have used Mentor in different organizations, they have mainly seen that middle managers have a better relationship with their employees, which has allowed them to better care for their staff. They have also seen how the user curve has pointed strongly upwards, suggesting that the tool has been used more frequently and users have become more communicative. Mentor's evaluation tool has also shown that employees have actually felt better and become happier over time.
How has Mentor been received by employees?
"We have faced an incredible number of different professions and the concern we have heard has often been that people are afraid of how this will be received by the employees, but I have not once heard that it has been poorly received by the employees. I think it's because Mentor so clearly benefits not only the manager and management, but also the employees," concludes Mattias.