By Tom Austin-Morgan

As the highways and transportation sector responds to rapid technological change, evolving sustainability goals, and ongoing workforce challenges, structured mentoring is proving invaluable – not only for new talent but also for experienced professionals seeking to broaden or shift their careers.

Mentoring isn’t simply a learning exercise. It’s a strategic tool that fosters knowledge transfer, employee retention, and organisational resilience. Within complex operational environments like highways and urban transport, it ensures that institutional knowledge – gleaned from decades of experience – is not lost but shared, refined, and built upon.

Transport for London (TfL) has long recognised the value of mentoring in supporting its diverse and multi-skilled workforce. As one of the UK’s largest public sector employers in the transport space (26,000 employees with an average tenure of 14 years), TfL operates a range of mentorship initiatives aimed at both early career staff and those looking to develop or pivot in their careers.

“Mentorship for TfL starts with people who are not even our employees,” states Liz Pannaman, Organisational Development Lead at TfL. “Our colleagues speak to people in colleges and universities who are thinking about coming into this industry or a career at TfL, as well as in schools and outreach programmes where we focus on students who may well have not had the same advantages as other students or have particular barriers going into employment.”

For new joiners, particularly graduates and apprentices entering engineering, operations, and project management roles, TfL offers structured mentoring as part of its programmes. Pannaman says around 250 people per year enrol in the graduate and apprenticeship scheme. These pairings connect junior staff with seasoned professionals, allowing mentees to gain insight into the challenges of real-world infrastructure delivery.

Legacy expertise and emerging demands

Beyond onboarding, TfL’s internal mentoring programme is open to all employees and matches mentors and mentees based on their development goals – whether that’s gaining leadership confidence, transitioning into strategy, or understanding the integration of data and digital systems into transport operations. The initiative plays a key role in helping employees adapt to future workforce needs.

“TfL has developed its own mentoring platform which we launched last year along with the Greater London Authority (GLA) – all the organisations attached to the Mayor of London,” Pannaman explains. “That gives people access to an even wider mentor pool.

“There are associated disciplines across all those organisations, but there are differences too, such as transport planning and the built environment in City Hall.”

In addition, the programme ‘Getting Ready for Senior Leadership’ supports TfL staff members to be sponsored by directors to allow them to see what that role entails, get an understanding of the wider functions of a complex organisation, as well as broaden their network.

In a sector increasingly defined by transformation, mentoring provides a human bridge between legacy expertise and emerging demands. And often, Pannaman says, being a mentor helps them see issues and subjects differently and adds to their own professional development.

Pannaman concludes: “There is a lot of knowledge and information in TfL as an organisation and our biggest learning resources are the people who have been here and navigated, often, their whole career through TfL in different departments and sometimes even different disciplines which is great for training people not just in a linear way, but also across the company.”

Discover how to become a mentor with CIHT.

Image: escalators leading into the Underground, London; credit: Shutterstock.