WORKLIFE GUIDANCE TOOLBOX
MENTORING AND PEER-GROUP MENTORING (PGM)
Mentoring means an assistance and learning relationship aimed at supporting an employee’s career development and offering psychological and social support.
Peer-group mentoring PGM is an activity whereby employees share and reflect their experiences, discuss problems and challenges they meet in their work, listen to and encourage one another, learn from one another and learn together.
A mentor is usually an experienced employee who knows the tasks in the organisation well. The job of a mentor is to teach a less experienced employee (a mentee), provide guidance, and act as a role model. A mentorship is usually established between the members of the same organisation and should be started on a voluntary basis. On the other hand, employees may also find mentors outside their organisation and take responsibility for their own personal and career development.
There are many kinds of mentorships. At workplaces, mentoring could well be more common than it is now. On the other hand, individual companies have employed mentoring to transfer tacit knowledge, strengthen the induction of new employees, help in alleviating the tension and uncertainty felt by employees returning from parental or other leave, and support work-life balance.
In Finland, examples of mentoring in the educational sector in the context of recent development projects is the Osaava Verme network that provides peer-group mentoring to support skills development and well-being at work.
The Osaava Verme network is aimed particularly at teachers at the start of their career, and its objective is to build a lifelong professional development continuum that starts with teacher training. Osaava Verme mentoring takes place in small groups in which skills and experience are shared between the members, who include both experienced and less experienced teaching professionals. There are small groups all over Finland.
How does PGM work?
PGM groups meet typically once a month to discuss work-related issues. The PGM approach draws on the constructivist view of learning which maintains that we construct our knowledge based on our prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs. Peer discussion is therefore an essential element in creating shared understanding of the work of teachers.
CASE FINLAND: PGM
More about Osaava Verme and PGM: http://www.osaavaverme.fi/eng
Watch the video about PGM!