Workplace Mentoring and Employee Performance in Selected Federal Universities in South-South Nigeria

Workplace mentoring has remained one human resources tool that has over the years been deployed in helping new and inexperienced employees in the organisation to learn from established experienced personnel, imbibing critical skills in the process and enhancing professional and personal growth. This study examined the effect of workplace mentoring on employee performance of selected Federal Universities in South- South, Nigeria. The study adopted a survey research design with a population of 9406 from the University of Uyo, University of Cross River and University of Port Harcourt. A sample size of 368 academic staff was determined using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) formula. Data was collected through a questionnaire and analysed using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) simple linear regression models. The results indicated that supervisory mentoring has a positive and statistically significant effect on employee performance (Coeff. =1.028; t-stat.= 60.831; p-value <0.05). Also, peer mentoring showed positive and statistically significant effect on employee performance (Coeff. =0.826; t-stat.= 41.746; p-value <0.05). Hence, it was concluded that workplace mentoring (supervisory and peer reviewed mentoring) is a strong and significant predictor of employee performance in federal universities in the South-South Nigeria. It was recommended that tertiary institutions should prioritise implementing standardized supervisory mentoring procedure and integrate peer mentoring into the university mentoring programmes to stimulate employee performance.