Learning as a Strategic Priority

Corporations need to mentor their employees more than ever in the 'war on talent'. IBM set about doing it better:

• Developing a single Web site as a “trusted source” for all corporate mentoring information
• Creating a series of streamlined and easy-to-access mentoring resources, such as mentoring podcasts, success stories, mentoring guides, and mentoring best practices that focus on the mentor and mentee relationship, and how to make it work
• Leveraging search capabilities of the corporate “telephone” directory to find a mentor for any level of expertise, career advisement, or social networking
• Establishing international and cross-geography mentoring programs whereby employees from other countries and cultures could learn from one another
• Forming group speed mentoring cafes, whereby an experienced mentor meets with numerous mentees in a group setting for topical mentor moments
• Changing the Individual Development Planning tool so that mentoring relationships can be recorded and included as part of the annual employee development plan
• Providing managers guidance on ways to include mentoring as a form of recognition in the performance evaluation process
• Building a “Dear Mentor” chat capability, where employees can electronically ask questions of a team of mentoring experts
• Designing an extensive Mentoring Promotional Campaign across the enterprise
  Securing executive backing through creating executive champions who act as advocates for the mentoring program

A good start. They've focused on key words like 'relationships', 'communication', even 'social networking', but I believe they've missed an opportunity for a unified environment to bring it all together.