We know that as a BA manager, training your staff is one of the most difficult parts of managing your team. Training can be a hit and miss for some and a common problem for many is that the training that staff receive is not translating back into the workplace. In simple terms, employees go on courses but struggle to apply it back into the workplace.

So, why are your trainees not performing at the level that they need to perform despite having training?

The three keys to success during and after training are: 

• Personal tailored support
• Someone to be accountable to
• A follow-through plan

Now how can you provide these key aspects for your trainees to improve their performance after training?

The answer is to implement a mentor alongside the training.

How does mentoring help your business?

Mentors are experienced professionals who:

• Guide mentees through their learning journey, 
• Work with them closely to help grow their technical abilities,
• Enable deeper confidence in themselves,
• Develop theoretical skills into practical ones. 

In other words, it’s a personalised form of one-to-one coaching.

This regular one-to-one coaching alongside attending training courses helps trainees to bridge the gap between theory and workplace practice. Mentors play a role in fine-tuning the learning process to better suit the employer/organisation as they fully understand both the business needs and the Apprenticeship process. 

Reflection leads to success

Coaching sessions with a mentor allow your team members to reflect on their training to ensure that their learning actually fits with the problems that they are facing at work, and can help the mentee with connecting the theoretical with the practical. Learning the theory and being able to pass the exam are just one side of the coin when it comes to the success of your team.

Recent studies have shown that your investment from training will increase by 4-fold when you combine training with mentoring to bring the theory to life. Let’s get down to business and talk about how you can put this into plan.

Implement mentoring for your BA team

There are two main ways to do this:

1. From within your organisation

You could find an experienced business analyst, within the company, to support the employee as a coach during training. Schedule regular sessions for both of them to discuss and reflect on recent learning and they can work together to think of an action plan for tasks at work. It’s important to define what the mentee should expect from the mentor in the short term and long term, and how they will monitor their progress.

However, this route can be a challenge for companies that don’t have the resources or experience to implement this kind of time consuming programme. This is where option two could prove to be a better route for these companies.

2. The Business Analyst Apprenticeship

While studying for a Business Analysis Apprenticeship, apprentices are appointed a Metadata mentor to work alongside them and provide them with a structure for evaluating themselves. This allows them to reflect on the work that they have done, while finding links to real life challenges that they face within their job role, and how everything that they’re learning while studying can be applied to their work straight away.

Mentoring begins right away for Apprentices; after they have been assigned a mentor they will get to meet their mentor during their induction at the beginning of the programme. For the entirety of their apprenticeship, they will have access to their mentor for an hour a month split up into whatever time increments suit them best. That may work out to be be 30 minutes together twice a month or a more intensive hour of coaching once a month. Their mentor will also guide them through the final exam preparations, meaning that support doesn’t end as soon as they finish their courses.

We see this mentor-mentee relationship as something deeper than just coaching a delegate through the process of the apprenticeship. Due to the longer nature of the apprenticeship programme in comparison to most courses, the mentor truly helps the apprentice to gain confidence through personal development, not just to build a specific skill set.

“Contact with my mentor has been great – sometimes we speak daily, and sometimes only once every couple of weeks. I know that if I have any BA query at all, I can email Mike and he will always come back with advice quickly. The expertise from Metadata has been absolutely brilliant, I couldn’t fault it.” – Kerry, BA Apprenticeship graduate

Can you afford not to implement a mentor?

A study compared performance before and after training (both with and without mentoring). Employees who did not receive mentoring during training were only improving at a rate of 24%. On the other hand, employees who received mentoring were improving at an impressive rate of 88%! 

Are you willing to miss out on a 64% productivity improvement?

If you are organising training for your BA team and think that your trainees could benefit from having a coach and mentoring, take a look at our Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme.