Academy Mentor Role Maintenance Update

Hi everyone! I hope you are well. Academy mentors are an integral part of our academy support system. Their work matters greatly in ensuring a good experience for our trainees/interns. You can see a glimpse of the impact on this thread. It is important to us that mentors get acknowledged for their good performance and there are systems in place to ensure that all academy mentors are fulfilling the responsibilities of their role.

Academy mentors have two primary responsibilities:

Maintaining a 48 hours response time.

You can of course be quicker but you can not delay it more than that. Put yourself in the shoes of someone in need of answers and reflect on how hard it is to wait for a response. Most have either been an academy intern/trainee and can empathize with the frustration that results from not getting responses within a reasonable time frame.

Fulfilling your assigned task within the duration outlined

When a mentor is onboarded, they are assigned a task and told the duration in which they have to complete it. For example, if you are welcoming new interns, you need to do it on either Monday or Tuesday. If you are processing monthly evaluation form submissions, you need to do it within 3 days or receive the form twice a week. Doing the task consistently and within the duration expected are both equally important.

Of course, you are exempted from both of these responsibilities if you are on an informed break.

What happens if a mentor does not maintain the response time and/or the task within the required duration?

This is how we will address delayed/lack of response time or not completing/delaying assigned responsibilities.

First Occurrence - Gentle Reminder

Second Occurrence - First Warning

Third Occurrence - Second Warning

Fourth Occurrence - Third Warning

Fifth Occurrence - Removal from the role

A delay in response time is any response that exceeds 48 hours.

A delay in task completion is any task completion that happens after the expected completion time.

For no response, if the mentor has maintained response with the Mentor Leader or ambassador of the project but not with trainees, the same system as above will be followed. If the mentor is altogether unresponsive, they will be checked in 2 times and removed after 2 weeks from the date of unresponsiveness.

The warnings will reset every 3 months. If you were on warning two but kept up a good response time for 3 months or task completion time and then get a report, we will start again with a gentle reminder.

Please note the exception is only for those on informed break. If you go on a break without informing the mentor leader(s) and ambassador of the program and get reported for no response, it will be treated under this warning system.

How will the academy team know that the responsibilities are not being fulfilled?

We already have mentor feedback forms that provide us with feedback on mentor responses. Apart from that interns/trainees can reach out to a mentor leader or ambassador in charge of the program to provide feedback on a specific mentor.

One new thing we will be doing moving forward is checking in with interns/trainees and asking them feedback on the mentors they have interacted with and the specific duration in which they have responded. This will be divided into tasks to make sure it's fair to all mentors. For example, a few interns may be contacted to ask if they have been welcome on Monday/Tuesday, few trainees may be checked in who just passed the trial period to ask if they were reached out to on X day(s) for trial completion reminder.

Periodically we will do anonymous checks using trainee/intern accounts to ensure all mentors are doing their tasks and maintaining a 48 hours response time.

What happens if I do well with my response time and task(s)?

For every positive review whether submitted through the mentor feedback or if an intern/trainee expresses mentor X has been helpful to the program Mentor leader, ambassador, or admin, mentors will get 50 cheers.

Every time we do a random check to ensure a mentor is doing a task and found them to be doing a good job, they will get 50 cheers.

Additionally, along with the cheers, positive feedback submitted through the mentor review form and positive outcomes of random checks conducted by the academy team will both result in the mentor being nominated for the academy awards. Find more information on the academy awards here.