The Award is intended to recognise excellence in the design and implementation
of mentoring programmes in the world of work and employment. It was designed,
with initial help from the European Mentoring Centre, now the European Mentoring
and Coaching Council, by David Clutterbuck and put out to three rounds of public consultation,
involving scheme coordinators and mentoring service providers in the UK, Continental Europe,
South Africa, United States and Australia.
The Award is overseen by an International Board
of Advisers, whose role is to recommend changes and oversee the probity of the process.
At present, there are accredited assessors in the UK, S.Africa, Australia, Washington DC, Norway and Denmark.
The Audit Commission is the first organisation to complete the process. Its scheme was
sufficiently well-managed not to need to go through significant change. A number of
organisations in various countries are now using the International Standards for Mentoring
schemes in Employment as the basis, on which to improve their programmes, with a view to
putting their schemes forward for the Award late this year or early next year. In general,
we do not expect organisations to put themselves forward unless they are reasonably sure
they will receive at least the bronze award.
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The assessment is carried out of weighted points across six key elements of a successful
mentoring programme. Assessors work against a detailed checklist that allows very little
room for variations in judgement. A supervising assessor checks the assessor's report against
the scores awarded, to ensure a high level of consistency.
The Audit Commission achieved 95% of the total possible score, which is just into the Gold
category. A key factor in this score was the quality of the support for mentors and mentees
after their initial training.
Other organisations in the pipeline for the Award are divided roughly equally between mentoring
programmes for diversity, graduate induction and developing leadership talent.
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