'Having a mentor made this journey easier.' An exploration of a formal, virtual, time-bound and paid-for mentoring programme in a dispersed third-sector organisation

There is a rise in formal mentoring schemes across organisations in different sectors, yet little is known about the way different mentoring scheme features shape participants' experiences of these relationships. Taking a developmental approach to mentoring (rather than a deficit approach) is an aspiration for many schemes; however, the existing literature does not identify which features support the developmental mentoring approach. This single case study of a formal, virtual, time-bound and paid-for mentoring scheme in a dispersed, third-sector organisation examines how mentoring can be developmental under these particular circumstances. A review of the literature was carried out within three sectors: workplace, education and healthcare mentoring. This qualitative study involves an interpretivist ontology and a constructivist epistemology, and acknowledges the difficulties and benefits of being an insider-researcher. Semi-structured interviews were held with twenty-four women to examine their experiences as mentees or mentors. The interviews made use of images to prompt reflections. Eighty-two documents were examined to provide a context for the scheme. Data were imported into NVivo as a management tool, and were analysed thematically. Four themes were found: the context within which the scheme is held; the features of the scheme; the relationships built by NCT mentees and mentors; and the development that has taken place for both mentees and mentors. The analysis suggests that understanding how NCT’s mentoring scheme can be considered to be developmental relies upon the synergy between the organisational context, the nature of the relationships created and the way features and processes within the scheme operate. The alignment of the scheme with organisational goals proved to be crucial, as did the presence of trust. Different sources contributed to the presence of trust. Further research could examine the processes of the creation of trust which were found to be significant in the developmental nature of the scheme