SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / THE PATCHWORK...
As more and more companies turn to early-retirement plans as a way to cut costs, programs in which older workers are employed as mentors to younger, less experienced colleagues are becoming harder to find.
“I think (mentoring is) a good concept that I’ve seen in the old corporate culture,” said Cynthia Partamian, acting director of Second Careers Program, a nonprofit employment and training agency for older workers. But “with so many cutbacks, we’re not seeing it happen as much,” she added.
Helen Dennis, who lectures at USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center, agrees.
“With all the buyouts, we (may) be losing all the potential for intergenerational teams,” said Dennis, a specialist on aging, employment and retirement. “The value of (this kind of) mentoring is being eliminated because of downsizing.”
On an informal basis, however--within companies, through private and government-backed enterprises and as consultants--older and retired employees often do find themselves in mentoring roles.
The purpose of a workplace mentor, whether the title is a formal one or not, “is to provide guidance and support to enhance performance and career development,” said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization in New York that seeks to advance women in the workplace.
Mentors can serve in a variety of roles--as teachers, protectors, counselors and career models, Wellington said. She said research has documented the importance of career mentoring, citing studies in which executives said having a mentor was a critical factor in their success.
As for the age of mentors, “one naturally thinks of a mentor as being older,” Wellington said. In Greek mythology, she said, Mentor--the loyal friend and adviser of Odysseus and teacher of his son, Telemachus--was an older man, actually the goddess Athena in disguise.
Harry Dictor, 63, an independent contractor who heads Kiko Development Corp. in Tarzana, said he finds satisfaction in several long-term mentoring relationships he has developed as a senior counselor with the Small Business Administration’s Service Corps of Retired Executives.
“It’s a turn-on--to see someone make a good move rather than a bad move,” he said.
SCORE, a nationwide program dating to the 1960s, offers free business counseling services from a group of volunteers, most of them retired.
Among those Dictor has mentored is Ron Moreno, 28, who says Dictor helped guide his successful effort to start his own business, Mortech Construction in Los Angeles, and pushed him to obtain his general contractor’s license.
Moreno, who finished college in Florida and came to California in 1993 with $40 in his pocket, had experience in carpentry. Dictor advised him on some of the basics of putting his business together: low-cost advertising, hiring subcontractors, managing people and money and communicating with clients. After the Northridge earthquake, Dictor began referring clients with quake-damaged properties to Moreno, giving his business a needed boost.
“If I was on my own . . . I’d be learning all this by trial and error,” Moreno said. “It would take me many more years to get to this level.”
Moreno said he still calls Dictor almost every day to discuss some aspect of his business.
As for the elder contractor, Dictor says he wishes he had had a mentor when he was starting out years ago: “I made a lot of very expensive mistakes.”
Norine Housky never had a mentor, either, but she has gravitated toward that role in her current job as lead operator in a telemarketing group at Harlyn Products Inc., a Los Angeles-based jewelry manufacturer.
Under her tutelage are three women, ages 19, 20 and 58. Although being a mentor isn’t part of her job description, Housky, 58, found that advising co-workers on everything from their love lives to shortcuts in order taking just came naturally.
“With mature workers,” said Vera Ferrera, the Second Careers counselor who placed Housky at Harlyn seven months ago, mentoring “may not be what the business is looking for, (but) they evolve into the mentoring role because of all their past experience.”
Tapping the experience and skills of retired teachers is the impetus behind two mentoring programs administered through Cal State Northridge’s School of Education.
The state-supported Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program employs retired teachers as sources of support and advice for more than 50 first- and second-year elementary school teachers in the San Fernando Valley area of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The privately sponsored Beginner Teacher Support Program: Help-Line, staffed by some of the same retired teachers in the state program, offers help to private and public school teachers who request it at any stage of their careers.
The retired teachers, who receive modest fees for their work, offer several benefits, according to Susan Wasserman, director of both programs.
“They have the expertise (acquired) over a long period of time, they have the time, and they’re not tied up with a full-time job,” said Wasserman, a professor of education at Cal State Northridge.
Beginning teachers often encounter crises that a mentor can help them handle, Wasserman said. For example, a first-year teacher on her first day of class was informed that she would be teaching a different grade level than the one she had planned for. The mentor helped her quickly set up new bulletin boards, move materials and plan a lesson.
The new teacher was so grateful, Wasserman said, that she later wrote a letter saying that without the mentoring support, she wouldn’t have made it through her first day.
The Service Corps of Retired Executives is seeking retired executives as volunteers, especially from the African American, Latino and Asian communities. For further information, call (818) 552-3206.
