From Sporadic to Intentional Mentoring

At SSM we believe in building relationships and nurturing growth. It wasn’t long after the COVID-19 crisis began that SSM team leaders identified a mutual concern: How do we continue to mentor our young engineers?

Sporadic mentoring- it’s those moments in the office when you have a unique project or a complex solution. All it took was a quick yell out the office door to our new team members. Invite them in to “take a look at this” and a learning experience was born.

When SSM offices made the switch to remote work, these opportunities for learning didn’t come with us. Our strategic office placements and deliberate seating arrangements weren’t as effective when we all began to work at home.

We recognized that for this new work environment to be sustainable over the long-term, it was an undeniable priority: these opportunities for sporadic mentoring, needed to become intentional.

Our team quickly adapted, implementing a simple solution: intentional mentoring. In other words intentionally inviting our less-experienced team members to virtual meetings. Allowing these team members to be a fly on the wall - or, a fly on the call. This meant taking deliberate steps to create these very important sporadic moments. So now, instead of yelling down the hallway, we’re texting and dialing someone into a virtual meeting. But the result is the same– learning.

As we continue to work in a hybrid environment, we are strategic about how we mentor our team members to become experts in the field. Every day our teams find new ways to be innovative in getting the job done and creative ways to share the solutions with their peer network.