Establishing a structured mentoring programme for early-career staff at a South African research-intensive university

In this paper, I share my experience establishing a structured mentoring programme to benefit early-career academics and support staff at a research-intensive university in South Africa. In justifying the adopted process, the paper first clarifies what mentoring is and is not in higher education. It further justifies the benefits and importance of a structured mentoring programme in this chosen context. While the institution provides many support programmes, especially for academic staff, equal participation for all staff is yet to be realised. This autoethnographic qualitative analysis employs Nancy Fraser’s normative framework on social justice to explain how the programme was established to foster a socially just workplace and encourage participatory parity. The programme participants included three groups of permanent employees: those employed through the nGAP, other early-career academic staff, and early-career academic support staff. These groups had unequal access to career development resources. Mentors for the programme were recruited from lecturers who had completed the nGAP, while mentees were chosen based on recommendations from heads of departments (HODs). An 18-month stakeholder engagement process occurred in two phases to prepare for the programme’s implementation.