USGS Mentoring Program Benefits
USGS Mentoring Program Benefits
The Program is designed to help accomplish the following goals in service to science:
- Facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and support of integrated science activities
- Accelerate acculturation and increase employee engagement and productivity for newer employees
- Improve recruitment and retention
- Promote leadership development at all levels
- Support professional development
The following outcomes have been reported by participants (proteges and mentors) in the Program:
- develop trusted counsel
- improve skills
- boost job effectiveness
- increase job satisfaction
- shorten learning curves
- enhance risk-taking skills
- enlarge network
- become a more effective leader
- communicate more effectively
- gain career guidance and a whole host of other benefits
The USGS prides itself in its excellency in science. With our aging workforce, we must insure that the knowledge and skills represented by those years of experience is passed to the newer employees of the agency as a means to succession planning. The resource of skills and knowledge that is contained within the current employees of the USGS is what makes our science excellent. To ensure that this bank of knowledge is not lost and thereby keep the excellence of our science the mentoring program is structured to focus on skills transfer from the more experienced employees to the less experienced employees.
The Mentoring Program places an emphasis on “intentional mentoring” focused on transferring skills from the more experienced mentor to employees with 5 years of USGS experience or less by offering the facilitated one-year partnerships. The Mentoring Program also offers self directed mentoring instruction and a Science Center Approach that trains employees within that Science Center to effectively and intentionally mentor each other.
The Mentoring Program uses technology enabled learning to deliver initial training to mentoring partners and providing partnership support. Program development and delivery occurs in the OED Program office.