During her four years at Missouri State University, Rachel Kuenzler gravitated steadily toward the transition from college student to the full-time job that would signal her official entry into adulthood.

Her diligence paid off when, a week following graduation, Kuenzler found work.

And in a corporate environment - where colleagues the age of her parents outnumber twenty-somethings - Kuenzler was confronted with a dilemma that was left unaddressed by her college professors.

"I thought they wouldn't take me seriously," said Kuenzler, 25, an associate software engineer at MasterCard International operations center in O'Fallon, Mo.

The gap between neophytes and experienced employees has been around as long as people have been reporting to places of work.

Last year, MasterCard addressed with a "reverse mentoring" program that asks younger employees to, in effect, take older workers under their wings.

Peer-to-peer coaching is not unusual in corporate or even small business settings. But in most cases the programs call on seasoned employees to impart the wisdom of experience to younger colleagues.

MasterCard, in a concerted effort to retain and promote its younger workers, provided them with an opportunity to share their thoughts and observations on the workplace environment.

The coaching program at MasterCard may be reversed, but the strategy remains the same, said Rik Nemanick, an adjunct instructor at Washington University and a principal with The Leadership Effect, a St. Louis business consultancy. He has developed and facilitated coaching programs at Anheuser-Busch, Monsanto and other area corporations.

Mentoring programs help firms identify and develop existing talent, accelerate professional growth, nurture company loyalty and retain valuable employees, Nemanick said in a recent presentation to the St. Louis chapter of the Human Resource Management Association.

"When talented individuals reach the juncture when they might leave, it's good that they have someone they can go to - someone they trust to discuss the situation," he said.

At Monsanto, experienced technology division employees have tutored younger workers since 2003. The program began with 30 matches. This year, there are 70 selected from a pool of 150 applications.

"It has become part of the developmental culture within the organization," Monsanto executive Maggie Morris told the human resources organization.

The reverse mentoring at MasterCard matched Kuenzler with Keith Martin, a 46-year-old team leader who joined MasterCard 20 years ago. The program placed 18 younger mentors with 11 supervisors.

Kuenzler saw the two-way conversation as an avenue to help Martin, and by extension other MasterCard supervisors, understand the conditions young employees seek in order to advance themselves along with the interests of the company.

"Younger employees like more openness, they are tech savvy and they don't necessarily want to always be in meetings," said senior human resources business partner Wanda Davega.

For example, Kuenzler and Generation Y prefer open work spaces that encourage collaboration.

Whereas Martin is admittedly more inclined to hole up in a cubicle.

Martin wasn't exactly venturing into foreign territory when his monthly lunch meetings with Kuenzler began about a year ago - he has a daughter slightly older than his mentor.

But their meetings highlighted to him the difference between being a parent and being a colleague or supervisor.

He learned that the young people now moving into the workforce have little interest in easing into the corporate whirlwind.

"They like to move at a quick pace and effect change," Martin said. "They basically want to jump right into the fire. They don't want to hold back or want to hear, ‘Why don't you wait three months to find your way around.'"

Nemanick traces the roots of the mentoring movement to a commitment to furthering the careers of minority employees at large and small businesses alike.

As the success of the programs became evident, many companies made the initiatives available to all workers.

In light of a Millennial Branding survey that this month revealed that young, recent hires comprise only 7 percent of the workforce at Fortune 500 companies, the opportunity to learn from a mentor is especially attractive to young people.

"It shrinks the big organizations," Nemanick pointed out. "It crosses boundaries that (employees) wouldn't normally cross."

Its success in O'Fallon prompted MasterCard to offer reverse mentoring to employees at its global headquarters in Purchase, N.Y.

Eighteen months into her first job, Kuenzler already has a sense that her monthly meetings with Martin are making a difference.

She recently learned of plans to open her workspace by removing the wall of the over-sized cubicle she shares with several other young employees.

More important, to Kuenzler, are the chats with Martin that have brought about the removal of a more symbolic wall.

"Being able to share our thoughts with supervisors, getting their take and seeing that they are taking notes and listening, I'm already seeing a difference," she said.