Hi Jigar,
It is ideal to have a combination of mentor and buddy system. This is especially good for freshers or junior employees.It has been noticed that the mentors assigned are senior employees in terms of age,designation and experience in the organisation and though they are excellent role models, most proteges' find it tough to openly communicate with them because of the seniority.The buddy comes into picture here and does the initial hand holding for the newly joined employee. To sum up the roles, interaction with the mentor is more for career development and direction whereas with the buddy it's more about day to day activities,norms,culture etc.It is a good idea to match the buddys with the new joinees taking into consideration some common point in their backgrounds like same college/same city/same hobby etc. This provides a good starting point for friendly and informal interaction
Hope the thoughts have been useful to you. Bill
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