CHICAGO-ASTD Conference - (May 17, 2010) In a major expansion of its widely adopted Web-based mentor/mentee matching and administration platform for corporate mentoring programs, Mentor Scout today announced the addition of a new suite of tools designed to nurture group mentoring initiatives. The Mentor Scout upgrade features new self-service tools to facilitate mentoring group formation and communication as well as administrator enhancements for group oversight, expanding the spectrum of mentoring activities that can be managed with the software.
"Group mentoring can be challenging to organize and manage because there are so many moving parts scattered across the organization. Yet it is a widely adopted mentoring strategy that is growing as organizations seek alternative models for skills and career development and knowledge transfer,” said Mentor Scout President Bruce H. Daly. “Our expanded Mentor Scout platform automates many of the day-to-day networking, scheduling and administrative processes to help these programs succeed."
The new group mentoring tools that have been added to Mentor Scout - being introduced in Booth #1802 at the ASTD 2010 conference that opens today in Chicago - include:
- Pre-defined mentoring group types that can be loaded onto the system as part of the account setup to enable employees to quickly locate groups of interest and connect with others with common needs.
- Support for ad hoc group creation, either by the mentoring program administrator or participants themselves, including searches of mentor and mentee profiles to expedite group formation.
- A group workspace with designated areas for group discussions, Q&As, group event notices, project postings and document uploads, expediting interaction and collaboration among group participants.
- Group administration control and moderation within the administrative console to aid program monitoring and evaluation.
Mentor Scout’s new group mentoring features can support one or more mentors for multiple mentees as well as any kind of mentoring objective - from employee skills and career development (presentation skills, budgeting, time management, proposal writing, career path direction, etc.) to improvement of supervisory and/or mentor skills.
Other enhancements include improved search capabilities with new name lookup and keyword search options, and expanded mentor/mentee profile options including photo, signature quote, projects in process, favorites and blog/scrapbook to assist in mentor/mentee matching and relationship building.
The new features extend the functionality of Mentor Scout, a self-service mentor/mentee matchmaking and administrative platform used for general mentoring programs as well as those designed for specialty diversity groups, high potential employees, new hires and/or new supervisors. Prospective mentors and mentees complete profiles about their backgrounds or interests and then search for matches by any group of parameters, eliminating time-consuming manual matching by a mentoring program director.
The software also includes a secure space for mentorship communication and goal-setting, a storage function for all program documents, and reporting tools for measuring program participation and successful matches. The program has facilitated hundreds of mentorships for organizations from Best Buy and Home Depot to General Mills and the Magazine Publishers of America.
Mentor Scout is available immediately under the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model at www.mentorscout.com.
About Mentor Scout
Mentor Scout develops Web-based software that facilitates mentoring-related talent development, knowledge transfer and collaborative interaction in large companies. Mentor Scout Standard Edition provides a full matchmaking and administration system for corporate and organizational mentoring programs. Mentor Scout Talent Networking Edition adds social networking tools designed to help engage, nurture and retain Generation Y employees. Customers include organizations such as The Women's Alliance at Xerox, Excellus BlueCross Blue Shield, and Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies. The company is a division of Nobscot Corporation, the pioneer in exit interview management software. For more information, visit
http://www.mentorscout.com.
SS|PR
Maya Zarchan, 719-634-8055
mzarchan@sspr.com
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