The Effect of Mentoring on Employee Performance of Selected Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Lagos State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT : The study sought to establish the effect of mentoring on employee performance of selectedsmall and medium scale enterprises in Lagos State, Nigeria. Despite various entrepreneurship programs such asapprenticeship, coaching, and Employee orientation engaged in by SMEs where an employee or apprentices istaught on how business processes flow, employees‟ performance among SMEs in Lagos State has been found tobe poor with regards to employee productivity, employee commitment, and organisational citizenshipbehaviour. The study was anchored Equity theory. The study used a survey research design. The unit of analysiswas owners/managers of registered SMEs in Lagos State.The target population was all the registered 8,396SMEs in Lagos State. A sample of 370 owners/managers (respondents) was selected throughsimple randomsampling.An adapted and structured questionnaire was used in collecting primary data. A pilot study wasconducted to ensure the data collection tool is reliable. The collected data was analysed using inferentialstatistics with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 26.0. The study found that throughApprenticeship training, the employeesare able to improve their productivity. Inaddition, the study foundthatCoaching had a significant influence on Employee Commitment. The study also found that throughemployee orientation, the employees are able to improve their citizenship behaviour in the organisation. Thepaper recommends that the supervising agency of selected oil and gas upstream companies in Nigeria shoulddevelop policy guidelines aimed at expanding and improving efficiency of the companies to facilitate highorganisational outcome through capability divestiture. The studyrecommended that SMEs owners in Nigeriashould encourage mentoring of their employees through apprenticeship, coaching and orientation in relation totheir previous efforts as this has been shown to improve employee performance.

KEYWORDS: Mentoring, Employee Performance, Apprenticeship, Coaching, And Employee Orientation,SMEs, Lagos State