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

Hello I am Santanu Mukherjee student of MBA HR, I agree with Bill but what you have mentioned at the end of the post might constitute lot of technical and administerial challenges, as matching up similar background with the buddy might have certain feasibility issue. Instead of that I feel the Buddy trainers should be provided with adequate and relevant training program regarding handling of new joinees and extending cooperation. This would bring consistency and standardization in the entire process. Hope this might be helpful for the topic.. Thank You