Review of Women’s One-to-One and Group Business Mentoring programme

The Women in Business (WIB) Mentoring Programme supports female-led businesses and act as a catalyst to achieving growth and development. It is based on the premise that providing mentoring support to growing companies to achieve a step up in their development helps the business to recognise and assess critical business issues. The programme is managed and coordinated by Scottish Enterprise (SE) and is delivered through the Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce and Business Gateway (BG). The evaluation aims to review the WIB Mentoring Programme for both Women’s One-to-One and Group Mentoring. The purpose of the review was to identify and examine findings to inform the assessment of future financial options and the development of a way forward for the programme.

In conducting the review, a mix of primary and secondary research was carried out. This included: desk research; a review of the process to examine the current operating procedures; gathering client evidence through postal and telephone survey and focus group; gathering mentor feedback through telephone discussions and face to face meetings; and gathering team feedback through face-to-face and telephone discussions.

The evaluation’s main conclusions were that performance has been below target for both programmes during the 04/05 period and has not reached the same levels as 03/04; similar to BM, the WIB programme would strongly benefit from continuous and reliable referrals supplied from the Scottish Enterprise Business Gateway (BG) and Local Enterprise Company (LEC) network and only then can the entire potential of the programme be fully optimised; and the follow-up and evaluation process, the lack of signposting to other business programmes and ability to graduate to other forms of support was seen as an area for improvement, amongst others.

Based on the findings, the report recommended there should be: a review of administrative processes; a review of databases processes and information management; maximisation of support and resources; improved understanding at the BG/LEC level; a continued pipeline of recruits; improved signposting; and mentor development.