Royal Bank of Scotland has partnered with online mentoring platform Digital Boost Upskilling to launch a new, free-to-use, mentor matchmaking service designed for the needs of the next generation of Scottish women in business.
Known as MentorMatch, the new service is being developed in response to research – which revealed that more than half (53%) of female business owners in Scotland feel that a lack of opportunities to be mentored has prevented them from progressing in their career, holding back the Scottish and UK economy.
The latest findings follow the Rose Review, which identified that a potential £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men.
The demand for effective mentoring programmes to empower tomorrow’s leaders to reach their full potential is clear as the study showed that more than 80% of female business leaders are likely to ask for mentoring support.
Digital Boost analysis indicates that the most in-demand areas of support focus on digital skill development as the top three most common topics of support requested by female founders are business strategy, content creation and strategy and digital marketing strategy.
However, there are significant barriers in place when it comes to effective mentoring in a modern environment. Almost half (47%) of female business leaders feel that mentoring is too formal a process, while another 49% reported that finding the right mentor is too difficult.