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Employees' reduced opportunities for incidental learning mean mentoring programs are now more important than ever, and the most effective ones have evolved significantly from more traditional arrangements.

Over the last 15–20 years, Robert Half Sydney HR director Emma Sestic has seen mentoring programs at many organisations, including hers, become more formal and more focused on developing specific competencies and skills.

"They've become more intentional, more structured and more outcome-driven," she tells HR Daily.

Beyond traditional relationships where a more senior employee imparts wisdom to a junior mentee or helps prepare them for leadership, a peer-to-peer relationship might aim to broaden one person's skillset in another's area of the business, while reverse-mentoring might be used to, for example, develop a senior staff member's digital fluency by leveraging a junior employee's expertise.

Relationships have also shifted from being long-term to more outcome-focused, Sestic says, and with the competencies or skills that need developing identified before making a strategic match...