R honda Kelley, an accounting manager and graduate business student, was worried about how to handle an unethical client. Fortunately, she could consult her mentor, a fellow Rotarian.

“Sometimes you have to decide, this client is not a good fit for me,” advised Ann Smith, of the Rotary Club of Downtown Macon, Ga., USA.

Kelley, who coincidentally had joined the Rotary Club of Greater Byron, Ga., less than two years earlier, admits she wasn’t sure how the mentoring program would work at first. But she began to trust Smith more when they discussed how to deal with clients who encourage unethical behavior.

“I was pleasantly surprised that her answers were direct and frank,” Kelley says.

Soon the pair forged a working bond, even though they’d never met and had only communicated online.

The program was organized by Downtown Macon club member Linda Brennan, an associate professor who teaches business ethics at Mercer University. Brennan matched members of her club with 22 of her students, most of whom worked part time. They could only communicate by e-mail.

Brennan said she set up the program because of the business community’s increasing dependence on electronic communication. For today’s employees, the speed, informality, and impersonality of text messaging and e-mail have the potential for disaster. A misfired or carelessly composed note can lead not only to etiquette breaches and angry clients but also to ethical problems.

Participants were instructed to initiate e-mails with their mentors at least once a month.

Rotarian Jim Stiff’s student reported that “she was having conflicts with her fellow workers and [problems] with producing harmony and energizing the workplace,” he recalls. “I even went over The Four-Way Test with her in how to deal with other people in the workplace.”

The students entered the virtual relationships knowing nothing about their mentors – not even their gender. The project was an exercise in developing networking skills, Brennan says.

She notes that online mentoring was an easy yet effective vocational service project, and it helped promote the Downtown Macon club. At the end of the semester, mentors and students met for the first time at the club’s weekly lunch meeting.

Brennan plans to incorporate the project into an undergraduate strategic management course for Mercer University seniors this semester.