Case Study: Employee Mentoring Programme

The Brief

Having mentored and tutored many of my own team in the past, I was more than happy to help set up a mentoring programme that would help the team at Sussex Transport develop their skills and help them achieve their personal goals. We initially took on 5 individuals on the first mentoring programme and a further 2 employees 7 months later.

I asked Damian Pulford (Managing Director) what he wanted to get out of the programme from an employer perspective. What he told me came as a complete surprise. He said “I would like employees within Sussex Transport to be offered a chance to achieve their life goals and objectives. I am more than prepared for individuals to realise that working at the Company may not be a “job for life”, and that if they could find a career that made them genuinely happy, I would be happy to support that, no matter where they ended up.”

I thought this was an incredibly refreshing approach towards trying to help employees at the Company find a job that they valued and were passionate about. Not just a job at the Company that employed them, but anywhere. So how did it go?

Date:

August 5, 2025

Categories:

Specialist Projects

Location:

West Sussex

Type of Business:

Transport & Warehousing

The Solution

The first meeting was held at the end of February 2024. We held a couple of group meetings so that the group could be open about anything they wanted to achieve. I also went through my own experiences so that each of them could get to know my back story and that nothing was off limits. I had to ensure I built a rapport with each mentee and make sure that they could also trust me, otherwise the programme would not have succeeded.

At these group sessions, I covered some of the principles that we would follow around goal setting and making sure that targets were achievable. Each mentee was told that our discussions were confidential and that anything I thought needed to be discussed outside of our meetings would be authorised by them first. We also agreed this to work the other way round too and that they would ask my permission if they wished to share my information. This agreement was key to building mutual trust so that we could discuss any topic during the mentoring sessions confidentially.

We then spent the next few months holding monthly 1-2-1 meetings with each mentee. They were asked to document their targets, goals and objectives and to update their progress each month. I am a great believer that if you write it down and update your achievements, you are more likely to commit to your actions.

This process continued until the targets had been exhausted or completed. The last mentoring sessions were completed in August 2025.

The Result

One of the biggest wins to come out of the process was for one of the mentees to leave the programme after about 6 months. This was because during our conversations, it was clear that his heart was not in his work at Sussex Transport. He wanted to make a living in the watch industry. He resigned from the Company and pursued his career initially using a contact that I gave him to talk about how the industry works. I still see this individual on a regular basis, and he looks as well and happy as I have ever seen him. He is making money from trading watches and he loves what he is doing.

Another notable win was in exploring potential career paths with one of the mentees. He was looking at roles in a professional career and wondering whether he should pursue this by studying for this qualification. This would have meant that he would need to study for two to three years, which would have been quite a commitment. We came to the realisation that this was not actually what he wanted to do in the long term. He realised that he wanted to stay in the business and continue developing his skills in that environment. He is currently learning new skills and aspects of the business and appears to be happy at this stage of his life.

The remaining individuals were equally as positive as the two examples above. I have watched and coached two of the mentees develop into extremely good and motivated people managers. These two particular individuals have some of the best people skills I have seen in people of this age group. I have tried to ensure that they get all the support they can from me by discussing difficult situations and offering some advice in areas that they have not encountered before.

Testimonial

When I started out on this process, my expectation of what could and would be achieved were somewhat lower than the actual results. The results in many ways have been spectacular for the following reasons: 1. Out of a total of 7 mentees, only 1 failed to complete the process; 2. All mentees achieved the majority of goals and targets they set out to achieve; 3. 1 mentee left the organisation to pursue their passion interest; Every time I take on a mentoring programme, I never fail to be amazed by what can be achieved by individuals with a little help and focus. Thank you to Damian Pulford for allowing HR Smart the opportunity to help Sussex Transport's employees reach their potential.

Jon Rush

Consultant

HR Smart have been incredibly supportive with our growing business and with staffing issues in particular. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. Thank you.