The benefits of an organizational mentoring program are numerous and well established. Mentoring programs, when successful, can attract and retain talented individuals and accelerate their leadership development within the organization. However, each company that adopts a mentoring program should put their own spin on the platform to achieve their company’s cultural and organizational goals.

At Rho, mentoring is an extension of our core values, helping to support the great people and team culture that set us apart in our industry. Thus, we have taken strides to weave mentorship into all aspects of our workplace environment.

How Rho Makes Mentorship a Priority:

The mentor is a critical element in Rho’s commitment to nurturing and growing great people. Although informal mentorship has always been a part of Rho’s company culture, Rho established a formal company mentoring program in 2013 to support continuous employee professional development within an evolving industry. Within Rho’s mentoring program, individuals are paired with a mentor based on the mentee’s developmental needs and goals. This one-on-one mentoring relationship allows the mentor and mentee to identify and resolve skill or experience gaps, discuss and implement effective problem-solving techniques for handling project workload and conflicts, and reflect on performance feedback to support the mentee’s career growth. Rho mentors are also supported by subject matter experts who provide mentors with guidance and resources on technical issues to ensure mentor-mentee engagement is as effective as possible.

In addition to the company-wide mentoring program, Rho also launched the Train and Mentor Leaders program in 2014. This program selects a subset of high-potential employees within the company and provides them training, customized coaching sessions, and a bevy of resources to support their leadership development.

Another opportunity available to employees is the RhoEXCHANGE program. RhoEXCHANGE matches individuals with subject-matter experts for any given learning objective. For example, someone working in clinical operations may request being paired with a data standards expert to better understand the role of Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) implementation in clinical development and regulatory authority submissions. The RhoEXCHANGE program allows for cross-functional training across a diverse range of disciplines and enables Rho employees to be proficient in all aspects of clinical research.

How Mentorship Makes Rho a Better CRO

Rho’s mentorship programs attract, train, and retain top talent in the clinical research industry.  This cultivates an environment of continued education, growth, and leadership development which in turns makes Rho a more knowledgeable partner for our sponsors.  In an industry where high turnover is typical, Rho’s turnover rates are consistently lower than average.  Low turnover allows us to provide sponsors with stable teams and reduces training costs.