EuroHealthNet, the European partnership for health, equity & wellbeing, looked at mentoring in the context of strategies for a healthier workplace in their report “Psychosocial risks & older workers’ health” from October 2022. In the report, they identified leveraging mentoring processes both from older to younger workers and the other way around as one of the strategies for healthier workplace.
The ‘traditional’ mentoring process in which senior employees’ mentor junior employees can have significant benefits for older and younger workers, including for their mental health and wellbeing. Older workers may be able to share insights on coping mechanisms and prioritisation of tasks which can help younger workers become more resilient in the face of high workloads. It can also bring value to the older workers by bringing greater purpose and satisfaction to their roles. ‘Reverse mentoring’ is another strategy which can be deployed to support the mental health and wellbeing of older workers. In this scenario, junior employees are given the opportunity to mentor senior peers. This has been found to help older workers develop new skills, connect better with younger generations, and respond better to the challenges of fast-changing working environments. This is particularly efficient in relation to digital skills, since connecting older workers to younger peers can help form and develop new skills in areas such as coding or social media, which in turn benefits employees and leads to new opportunities for older colleagues.
Promising practices include:
- Implementing ‘reverse mentoring’ schemes in which younger colleagues mentor older employees.
- Nurturing ‘traditional’ mentoring processes along the older-younger management line.
- Fair career training and retraining prospects.
- Supportive performance management.
Read more about other strategies for a healthier workplace in the EuroHealthNet report on “Psychosocial risks & older workers’ health” (click here)
