National Mentor Month: Mentoring is Critical to Professional Development at Cintas

CINCINNATI - January is National Mentoring Month. Originally created by the youth organization Mentor, National Mentoring Month was established to help bring awareness to the power and impact of mentoring, and inspire people to get involved by providing enrichment and support to others.

People who connect with others – especially those who mentor young and diverse individuals – help open doors, expand horizons and ultimately help create opportunities for young people that they may not otherwise have dreamed of, or had access to.

At Cintas Corporation (Nasdaq: CTAS), the Fortune 500 business services company, executives view mentoring as an opportunity to enrich and expand the professional lives of the company’s employee-partners.

The success of the company’s business relies on the passion, expertise and dedication of its workforce, and Cintas has prioritized its commitment to its employee-partners’ career development.

Cintas’ organizational structure presents opportunities for employee-partners to pursue new work experiences while remaining with the company. The company’s strong desire to promote from within and support its ongoing growth with internal resources whenever possible signals its dedication to supporting the ongoing development of its employee-partners.

Cintas takes a holistic approach to its workforce’s performance and advancement, and utilizes various development opportunities to continue fostering its employee-partners’ knowledge, experience and leadership.

Mentoring is a universal element of the company’s development strategy, and a central component of Cintas’ employee-partners’ development of Cintas’ employee-partners.

Mentoring opportunities are available to all of the organization’s almost 43,000 employee-partners, no matter their job or tenure. In addition, mentoring is a key component of Cintas’ annual succession planning process and has provided tremendous returns in helping develop the company’s current and future leaders.

The company has established a framework to help best position mentors to guide their mentees on their current career path and help them obtain the necessary skills, knowledge, professional relationships, and insight to take the next steps in their careers. Employee-partners may also be paired with a mentor to help assist acclimation to a new role or department, or to help seed relationships in a complementary discipline.

Cintas also offers formal training and resources to new mentors. This additional focus and preparation before becoming a mentor means they enter the program with a strong understanding of the process, its application, and when to recognize that a mentor–mentee relationship has come to its natural end.

As each new mentor-mentee relationship begins, both employee-partners have guided resources to track regular meetings, touchpoints, opportunities and goals of the relationship.

Most members of Cintas’ leadership team continue to mentor employee-partners and are trusted to dedicate their time and attention to our company’s next generation of leaders.

About Cintas Corporation