Evidence Review on Labour Market and Job Place Retention: Mentoring Pathways Towards Employment

ABSTRACT

In Europe, there are four main active labour market programs: training, job search assistance, wage subsidies and subsidized public sector employment. Literature indicates that among all four, job search assistance, which includes mentoring, is the active employment policy with the most positive results. This paper, an output of an European funded project work package, is aimed to answer the question ‘What is there that says that mentoring is effective in job place retention?’ In order to answer this question, we conducted a literature review. In terms of content, our literature review’s results could be categorized into 14 main topics: Retention, Employee, Supervisor, Leadership, Education, Health Care, Management & Marketing, ICT & IT, Finance, Programme, Benefits, Mentee, Mentor, Less positive about mentoring. In addition to the academic literature review, we conducted a review in four different EU countries: Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Portugal. Based on these reviews we will discuss the recommendations considering the three types of actors present in an effective mentoring process: mentoring coordinator, mentor and mentee.

KEYWORDS:

• Active labour market programs
• job search assistance
• mentoring
• employment
• job place retention
• mentoring coordinator
• mentor
• mentee
• EU countries

Acknowledgements

We thank all the teams of the partner institutions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marta Gonçalves is an international recognized Expert in Clinical and Health Psychology, Expert in Work, Social and Organisational Psychology and an Advanced Expert in Psychogerontology, having a PhD in Psychology.

Diana Farcas is finishing her PhD in Psychology on international mobility patterns: assigned expatriation vs. self-initiated expatriation vs. emigration.

Tiago Leitão is the Board President and Founder of Aproximar – a Collective for the Social Development in Portugal.

Giorgos Giorgakis is the Founder and Managing Director of Eurosuccess Consulting, accredited as VET Center from the Human Resource Authority of Cyprus.

Salajeanu Florian Valeriu is the President of the ASSOC – the Professional Non-Governmental Social Assistance Association and the Vice-President of the National College of Social Workers in Romania.

Mihaela Pintea Traian is involved in the development and implementation of all projects at CFF – the Association of Research and Training Center of North University of Baia Mare in Romania.

Krisztina Kovacs is the Program Manager at Bagazs – a Public Benefit Association in Hungary.

Additional information

Funding

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme. Project number: 2015-1-RO01-KA204-015146.