Organizations have established and implemented mentoring programs to benefit both employee and employer. Through mentoring, the employee gains additional knowledge, growth and continued development. The benefits for the employer are employee retention and improved productivity. Several qualitative and quantitative studies in education and small and medium sized enterprises (SME) found that successful mentoring programs foster better opportunities for protégé advancement. It was found that one-on-one relationships established between the mentor and the protégé help build trust, establish mutual respect and develop networking opportunities. As an alternative to conventional, or face to face, mentoring, other types of mentoring are being examined, among them e-mentoring. E-mentoring is defined as electronic contact using computer-mediated communication to establish a mentor protégé relationship. Little empirical research has been conducted to date on e-mentoring programs to measure their effectiveness. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore both the advantages and disadvantages of e-mentoring in the workplace with an emphasis on factors needed to effectively e-mentor. The advantages of e-mentoring that are examined in this dissertation are employee productivity, knowledge transfer and knowledge management through the use of e-mentoring. Examined in this dissertation are the positive e-mentoring factors of building trust, establishing effective communication, knowledge transfer and technological essentials. Disadvantages to e-mentoring that are examined are a decrease in real time verbal communication, the need for training and the time needed to create effective pairing of mentors and protégés. The goal of e-mentoring is to assist management in creating a virtual environment where the organization's goals can be met. The goal of this dissertation is to aid management, rather than to aid e-mentoring.