E-mentoring: solving the issue of mentoring across distances

摘要

The virtues of mentoring within organisations have long since been extolled by many of the leading authorities in the field and HR people, but little is still known about the e-mentoring approach. Some organizations have flirted with e-mentoring but few have come close to emulating the successes that have been achieved in the areas of business-to-business in the UK (see Box 1) or business to university in the USA. Why, we might ask ourselves, when e-mail is such a prevalent means of communication throughout the corporate world should this be? It cannot be the technology that causes the problem, so perhaps it is our lack of understanding of e-mentoring's key features and benefits?