“How can I get employees to learn from one another?” is a question I get asked at least once a month. And it makes sense that so many organizations are interested in peer-based learning as a way to transfer knowledge and close skill gaps. When an employee needs to get up to speed on a particular topic or skill, there is almost always another employee somewhere in the organization who could help that individual. And this type of learning has several obvious benefits over formal training. For starters, it is relatively low cost and less disruptive to normal work schedules. And since the colleague providing instruction will understand the context in which the employee will apply the knowledge on the job, this type of learning is more likely to target exactly what the employee needs to know.

APQC’s research has identified workplace mentoring as one of the most effective ways to enable peer learning and curtail the loss of tacit knowledge from retirements, turnover, and internal churn. Since last year, we’ve been researching best practices for skill-based, career, and soft skills mentoring. This work has given us insight into what makes a good mentoring program tick and it has exposed us to some truly impressive mentoring programs and solutions.

Cardinal Health has one of the most comprehensive mentoring efforts featured in our research. The organization’s mentoring initiative supports nine formal programs, some enterprise-wide and some local to specific business units.  The most expansive of these is its open mentoring initiative, which is open to any employee wishing to reach out across fields, regions, or functional areas to support their individual development goals or gain a better grasp of the firm’s operations. This program enables employees to learn almost anything they believe would help them on the job, from specific knowledge and skills to more general strategies for career management and personal effectiveness.

This Thursday, Cardinal Health’s mentoring lead Susan Moss will be presenting 3 Keys to Building a Strategic Mentoring Program as part of our monthly KM and HCM webinar series. She’ll be joined by Phil George, CEO of MentorcliQ, the software provider that supports Cardinal Health’s mentoring program.

After getting a sneak peek at the slides for this week’s webinar, I am incredibly excited about the insights that MentorcliQ and Cardinal Health will be sharing. If your organization cares about knowledge management, people development, or employee learning, I recommend registering for this call.  Even if you can't attend live, you'll receive the slides and a recording, as well as a complimentary copy of APQC’s case study on Cardinal Health’s mentoring program. This represents a $50 value and is a great opportunity to access some of our member-exclusive research on this topic.