Episode 155

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Published on:

4th Jun 2025

Why Mentorship Is the Most Underrated HR Strategy | Lisa Fain

This episode is sponsored by ‘Deel: Your Forever People Platform’.

Managing a global team is complex. Deel makes it simpler with payroll, HR, IT, and compliance—all in one place. That’s why over 35,000 businesses trust Deel to hire, pay, and manage teams worldwide.

See how Deel works: https://www.deel.com/nickday/?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=nickday&utm_campaign=emea-t1a-gb_aware_branding_nickday_podcast_hr-nickday-h125_all_all&utm_content=aware_all_podcast_hr-preroll-h125script_en



What if the key to transforming your culture, retaining top talent, and driving inclusion isn’t another DEI initiative.


But a better mentoring strategy?


In this episode of the HR L&D Podcast, Nick Day is joined by Lisa Fain, CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence and co-author of Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring. Together, they unpack how mentoring, when done right, can become the most powerful tool in your leadership and talent strategy.


Lisa shares practical frameworks for building high-impact mentoring programs, avoiding the “pair and pray” trap, and designing mentorships that thrive across differences in identity, background, and culture. You’ll learn why mentoring is especially crucial for Millennial and Gen Z retention, how to train mentors for success, and what most companies get wrong when trying to scale mentoring initiatives.


If you’re serious about creating a more inclusive, engaged, and future-ready workforce—this episode is your blueprint.



Connect with Nick Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/

Connect with Lisa Fain: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisazfain/


Find your ideal candidate with our job vacancy system: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/919cf6b9ea


Sign up to the HR L&D Newsletter - https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/23e7b153e7



(00:00) Intro

(01:35) Meet Lisa Fain

(04:06) Coaching vs. Mentoring: Key Differences  

(08:23) Using Mentoring to Attract & Retain Talent  

(10:55) Mentorship as a Practical DEI Strategy  

(12:55) Building High-Impact Mentoring Programs  

(20:52) Common Mistakes in Mentorship Program Design  

(27:02) How to Build Trust and Openness in Mentoring  

(30:31) Making Mentorship Inclusive and Accessible  

(33:46) How to Start a Mentorship Program  

(37:39) One Piece of Advice for HR Leaders  

(41:32) The Future of Work & Mentoring 

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About the Podcast

The HR L&D Podcast
Leadership, recruitment, culture. Conversations with HR's best
HR gets handed the problems nobody else wants to own. The restructure, the grievance, the engagement survey that came back badly. And then gets asked why people are leaving.

I'm Nick Day. I run an HR recruitment agency, which means I spend most of my week on the phone to HR directors, HR leaders and people leaders talking about what the job is actually like rather than what's written on the job spec. This HR Podcast came out of those calls. I kept hearing things worth repeating, and nobody was repeating them.

Every week I sit down with HR leaders, chief people officers, L&D specialists and the occasional academic who has changed how I think about work and people engagement. We get into leadership, and what happens when someone brilliant at the technical side gets promoted into managing humans.

Employee engagement past the survey score. Diversity, equity and inclusion in a climate where saying those words out loud has become a decision in itself. Pay transparency, talent management, reducing bias in hiring, HR digital transformation and the HCM systems everyone is being sold. And of course we cannot forget HR AI tools and platforms that are flooding the landscape as AI in HR becomes a hot topic every people leader is keen to understand and leverage.

Wellbeing comes up constantly, and it usually turns into the same question. Who looks after the HR team.

I'm not an HR practitioner and I don't pretend to be. I'm the person who hires them, which puts me in a useful position. I get to ask the obvious question that everyone in the room already knows the answer to and nobody says.

No script and no polite version. Mostly it's the conversation you'd have with someone doing your job at a different company, if you ever got the chance to sit down with them.

If you work in HR, people management or L&D, or you're building a career in it, start by subscribing to The HR L&D Podcast. We have had guests including Stephen Covey, Alan Stein Jnr, Andrea Wareham and Dr. Thom Mayer among other HR Leaders who are shaping the future of work and leadership.

Need HR staff? I run JGA Recruitment, an HR and payroll recruitment agency. www.jgarecruitment.com or info@jgarecruitment.com

Want to be on the show? Nick@jgadigital.com

If payroll is closer to your world, I also host The Payroll Podcast, the most listened to payroll show in the world.

Topics include HR leadership, workplace culture, retention, people management, employee engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI strategy, AI for HR, AI recruitment tools, talent management, HR digital transformation, HCM, staff wellbeing, pay transparency, reducing bias, L&D and HR recruitment.

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Nick Day