Промышленный лизинг Промышленный лизинг  Методички 

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they enjoyed working for, and vice versa. However, it did not always work out that way. Even today, there are younger professionals who bounce from partner to partner, simply because no one can determine the best fit for them.

Currently, many firms assign the mentor and protege to each other, often on the proteges first day of work. And while this is not as organic as the former system, it does have its advantages. First, it requires that some form of relationship exist, and it prevents wallflower partners or wallflower associates from hiding in their offices. Second, it forces proteges to work with someone to identify their goals and a plan for getting there. This is beneficial even if the goal is not necessarily a partnership or if the goal is unknown. It is one more way in which expectations can be managed. It also forces the younger professional to develop one or more career plans and to plan with contingencies. For the younger professional, this may be one of the greatest advantages to a mentoring program.

The expectations of mentoring need to be established at the beginning. Most professionals are extremely busy and cannot afford to waste time on what they perceive to be nonbillables. However, if mentors and proteges are educated on the positive aspects of mentoring and what it brings to the firm, they can slowly be convinced to spend their resources in this very important role and function. Written guidelines should include the following, taken from Ida O. Abbotts excellent book, The Lawyers Guide to Mentoring:9

Program purpose and objectives How the program objectives should be met How program objectives will be monitored How the program will be evaluated Responsibilities of the mentor Responsibilities of the associate How the mentoring relationship works Role of the program coordinator

What to do if problems arise in the mentoring relationship How mentors and associates will be matched

Duration of the mentoring relationship

Time commitment

How mentoring activities should be recorded on time sheets

Confidentiality

Budget

The advantages of an administered mentoring program are numerous, for the firm as well as the protege. The firm can immediately begin instructing



the professional on how it prefers things to be done. This indoctrination (for lack of a better term) happens at most firms, whether it is overtly admitted or not. Formalizing it through the mentoring program raises it to an institutional truth that encourages communication about what firm culture can or should be. The mentoring program also builds a tremendous amount of loyalty from the protege to the mentor, and thereby to the firm. This above all gives retention its worth in time and resources.

To make the process more efficient, many firms assign more than one mentor to each junior professional. This allows the junior professional to spread the questions around to more than one person, thus preventing the mentoring program from taking up too much time from one individual. It also prevents problems with bad mentors, bad advice, or simply a breakdown in what is a very personal relationship.

Mentoring is not, primarily, about the teaching of skills. The mentor is meant to provide guidance and advice, not necessarily strict training. It is assumed in firms today that the training will be provided by a number of professionals, mentors, and others, from project to project. In fact, one of the greatest benefits to a larger firm is that often the associates are exposed to a number of professional staff from all levels on different projects. Since each supervisor will perform tasks and projects in different ways, the training itself is varied and associates will eventually develop their own style. But supervision is not mentoring. Mentoring involves guidance, showing the way of the world to the younger professional. The mentor should provide experience and encouragement and should work to develop the interpersonal skills of the protege.10 The mentor is above all intended to be a background or a voice to which the professional can turn to on a variety of issues, not just a single question on a particular project.

Quality of Life Issues

It is no secret that professional services firms expect a great deal of sacrifice from their employees. In turn, those employees are compensated extremely well with pay packages, perks, and benefits. However, quality of life issues often are raised within firm surveys as a top five issue with which professionals have problems. The long hours and the travel time are difficult on young families and often lead to defections from professionals looking to have a life, not just earn a living. The strongest weapon that a firm has concerning quality of life issues is the group input panels discussed earlier.

When the non-equity professionals are listened to through these groups, it provides a cross-section of opinion on whether the quality of life at the firm is suffering. This validates that a problem is real and not the product of one or two malcontents. At the same time, it also ensures that the problem, once



identified, is dealt with on an ongoing basis between the group input committee and the leadership of the firm.

Debriefing the Recruiting and Retention Processes

At some point on an annual basis, it is important that the recruiting process as a whole be reviewed separately by the hiring committee and by the management committee of the firm. This is a step in the recruiting and retention process most often overlooked, to the detriment of many firms.

The hiring committee should undergo a detailed analysis, concentrating on certain, quantifiable metrics: how many candidates were considered, how many were interviewed, what was the acceptance rate, and how much money was spent per candidate on a pro-rata basis. These and other metrics help the committee determine where the money and time should be spent in the next years recruiting, and eventually the goal is to have most of the inefficiencies of the process eliminated. Keeping a running total of five years of rolling budgets is particularly helpful, as these can be charted against firm growth and the professional services economy to spot trends that can be anticipated for the next year. The data collected by the hiring committee should then be passed on to the management committee, along with any recommendations that the hiring committee has for changes to the program.

The management committees review should be more in line with this second, five-year review of the hiring committee. The management committee should be able to take the 10,000-foot view of the recruiting process in general to determine:

Are we getting the people that we need?

Why are certain people accepting, and why are certain people rejecting? Once we recruit a new employee, what is the average length of tenure?

What do exit interviews indicate are the top five reasons people give for leaving?

Are there trends that we, as a firm, have not yet identified?

Summary

Professionals by their very nature can have difficulty in actually running their business. Professionals would often rather be providing client services than be involved in the day-to-day details of operations. However, there are numerous opportunities for the firm to obtain objective data that affects not



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