Employee Resources

UDOT Mentoring Program – Overview

The major function of the Mentoring Program is to promote the mentee’s career and personal development, facilitating continuous improvement. It also serves as a culture-building tool aimed at sharing best practices, transferring institutional knowledge, and creating a network of interpersonal relationships across the organization.

The goal of UDOT’s mentoring program is to connect people with continuous learning opportunities.

Any UDOT employee may participate in the mentoring program as a mentor or mentee. The program is open to all employees including regions, admin, TOC, Motor Carrier and other divisions.

The primary objectives of the mentoring program are employee-focused; the mentoring program will help employees:

Navigate UDOT (logistics of organizational structure and available resources).
Create a vision for career growth (professional development).
Develop management and leadership skills (personal development).

Before you get started, please watch Creating a Successful Mentoring Relationship.

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring is a voluntary partnership between two people committed to defining common goals and expectations, along with building a relationship of mutual trust and respect. Both the mentor and the mentee give and grow in the mentoring process. The mentee can learn valuable knowledge from the mentor’s expertise and experience. Mentors can find value in seeing the organization from a different point of view, passing along knowledge and experiences that help others, and expanding their professional network to include new people.

What do mentors and mentees do?

Mentors and mentees will meet or talk on a regular basis, defined in a mentoring plan based on goals and objectives tailored to the interests and needs of the pair. The mentoring relationship may be utilized as a sounding board for ideas and questions or exploring a topic together through online training, books, or articles. The mentoring relationship could be focused on external networking and watching industry trends through professional associations or more focused on the inner workings of UDOT and gaining a better understanding of UDOT processes or procedures.

How long does the mentoring relationship last?

Learning and Development staff will facilitate pairing mentors and mentees based on expressed interests and developing a mentorship plan. The individualized plan will outline agreed-upon expectations for frequency of meetings, methods of communication, topics of interest, and confidentiality. Depending on the goals and objectives identified in the plan, the formal mentoring relationship may last a few weeks to a few years. Learning and Development staff will do a mid-point check-in with the pair and document completion of the formal mentoring relationship based on fulfillment of the mentoring plan.

How do you get started in the mentoring program?

Participation in UDOT’s mentoring program is voluntary. Supervisors might recommend a mentor to support goals and objectives in a performance plan, but the program is not intended to be required and supervisors will not be assigned as mentors to direct reports.

Here are a basic steps to get started:

Fill out an application form online. In addition to your contact information, it will ask you to indicate your interest in being a mentee or mentor and what you hope to accomplish by being part of the program.

A member of the Learning and Development team will contact you to follow-up with a personal interview.

The Learning and Development team will pair you based on interests expressed in the application and interview.

Your first mentoring meeting will be facilitated by a member of the Learning and Development team to make introductions and form the mentoring plan. This meeting may occur over the phone or online with screen sharing if geographic distance prevents an in-person meeting.

The plan template includes:

Goals and objectives
Planned activities to achieve goals and objectives
Frequency of meetings/conversations
Target timeline for completion/duration of mentoring relationship
Confidentiality considerations

Ongoing meetings and activities are the responsibility of the mentor and mentee.

A member of the Learning and Development team will check-in with both individuals at the mid-point of the mentoring plan based on the targeted timeline. This individual is available to answer questions or provide support at any point during the formal mentoring program participation.

You may contact the Learning and Development team member at completion of the plan goals or they will reach out at the target completion date of the mentoring plan.

The Learning and Development team member will document completion of the mentoring plan.

Mentor Responsibilities

Meet with your mentee and/or engage in mentoring activities in-person (or on the telephone as a backup)

Willingly share your experience and professional success in the organization

Explain how the organization is structured

Support the organization’s mission, vision, and goals

Look for experiences that will stretch the mentee (i.e., shadowing during meetings, suggested readings, etc.)

Stay accessible, committed, and engaged during the length of the program

Listen well

Provide open and candid feedback

Offer encouragement through genuine positive reinforcement

Be a positive role model

Share “lessons learned” from their own experiences

Be a resource and a sounding board

Keep your conversations confidential

Let the Mentoring Program Manager know as soon as possible if you are having a problem connecting with your mentee

Mentee Responsibilities

Meet with your mentor each month and/or engage in mentoring activities in person (or on the telephone as a backup)

Be proactive about contacting your mentor and scheduling meetings

Commit to self-development

Assume responsibility for acquiring or improving skills and knowledge

Discuss individual development planning with the mentor

Be open and honest on goals, expectations, challenges, and concerns so others can help you

Prepare for meetings and come with an agenda

Actively listen and ask questions

Seek advice, opinion, feedback, and direction from the mentor

Be receptive to constructive criticism/feedback and ask for it

Keep your conversations confidential

Respect the mentor’s time and resources

Stay accessible, committed, and engaged during the length of the program

Comfortably give feedback to the mentor on what is working or not working in the mentoring relationship

Let the Mentoring Program Manager know as soon as possible if you are having a problem connecting with your mentor

Resources

The UDOT Mentoring Program and the organizational mentoring programs are designed to be budget neutral, although at the organization-level, management may allocate funds. Organizational-level mentoring programs will require a full or part-time Program Manager to coordinate and support mentoring events and activities.

A resource page on the UDOT University (UDOT U) will list a wide range of in-house learning tools and opportunities (i.e., knowledge transfer) as well as links to external resources. The Department offers all employees access to online training classes, webinars, videos, eBooks, and other developmental tools through the UDOT Online Learning Portal and Skillsoft. Mentoring program participants may use these as discussion topics during monthly meetings. Mentoring courses that reside in UDOT Learning Portal can be used to prepare the mentor and mentee for learning, engaging and managing their mentoring relationship.