Educational and Economic Aspects of Mentoring

Abstract

The OECD's skills strategy and policy highlights skills ahead of formal qualifications and draws attention to the importance of work-based learning (apprenticeships). In the economy, given the utilisation of the skill set of individuals at the workplace level, the conscious management of the knowledge and skills of the organisation now appears to be an efficiency-increasing factor. One way to do this is to involve and mentor economically inactive groups (students / new entrants, low-skilled social groups and pensioners) in the labour market. Mentoring should be treated as a discrete area, but one that is still a part of the organisation's strategically defined human resource management and knowledge management system, in which the goals, roles, processes, responsibilities and benefits, as well as the possibilities for development, are clarified. This study analyses the educational and economic context of mentoring, the nature of mentoring and the possibility of its application; its conclusions provide an appropriate framework for developing a mentoring programme.

Keywords

• education
• low-skilled workers
• mentoring
• skilled professionals
• skills-set