The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Mentorship Program

With employee turnover on the rise, establishing a company mentorship program is now more critical than ever. However, there's a lot to figure out, especially as many businesses maintain hybrid or fully remote workforces. This guide will provide a deep dive into tips and tools you need to establish a formal mentorship program that works for your organization. While it is possible to set up mentoring informally, businesses get the most out of it when they create properly structured mentorship programs.

What makes a good mentorship program?

A well-planned and structured mentoring program provides a clear path for mentees to learn and grow by connecting with a suitable mentor. It needs planning and organization to create an effective mentorship program, including training mentees and mentors on how to make the most of the program.

Well-put-together mentoring programs look to match mentors and mentees carefully to give the best possible results. The matching process is important, and should take into account values and skills, focusing on the human connection to facilitate open sharing of knowledge, wisdom, and learning.

A good program will train both parties to communicate well and work out an efficient and effective path forward. You’ll want to establish company goals and set regular check-ins, deadlines, and mentee goals. This ensures that the mentee keeps moving forward and learning.

Every mentorship program should prioritize:

Executive sponsorship

focus on catalyzing a culture of learning and sharing. Knowledge doesn’t have to come from the top down. Make your team aware of this and make sure it’s a visible part of your company culture.

Training

Think of mentoring as exercise. It’s something you have to practice – teach your employees how to set goals and have impactful conversations with one another.

Incentives

Your leaders have an obligation to help build out your mentoring pipeline. Incentivize this, and again, make sure mentoring is part of your culture.

Building community

Make sure your employees know there is a community to support them. Ultimately mentoring is about building up your people and facilitating human connections.

Why do you need a formal mentorship program?

It isn’t just mentees that get something out of being part of a mentorship program. This really is a case of everyone benefiting.

Mentees can:

Have the benefit of learning directly from someone who is where they want to be

Climb the career ladder faster by avoiding mistakes they otherwise might have made

Gain confidence and self-belief

Learn leadership skills and qualities

Get different points of view and learn new ways of thinking

Achieve their goals faster

Focus on their strengths and learn how to overcome their weaknesses

Mentors can:

Create a legacy by passing on their knowledge and wisdom

Learn as much from their mentees as they teach

Learn how to share and pass on knowledge

Gain new perspectives and ideas from interacting with their mentees

Develop their leadership and coaching skills

Be seen as a leader within the company

How to establish a mentoring program that works for your business

1. Define your goals

Before you even set up your mentoring program, it’s best to take some time to think about what you want your outcomes to be. Start by defining your goals for your mentorship program. Do you want to create more leaders? Do you want to ensure specific skills are developed? Do you want better communication and interaction among departments? Do you want to increase diversity?

What specifically will you accomplish with this mentorship program?

Look at what you think your mentees and mentors will get from your program. Make sure that when you create your program, you can meet these needs and communicate them well to potential participants.

2. Define success

Define your success metrics. Your metrics will be different because you know your business the best and what you want to achieve, but some common metrics include:

participation rate/sign-ups

program retention rates

increased employee retention

increased employee engagement

3. Invest in mentoring tools

There’s a lot involved with starting mentorship programs and a lot to track. Rather than attempting to manage everything with spreadsheets and a basic database, it is best to invest in a mentoring platform that’s specifically built to create a robust and efficient environment for your program.

With a manual system, it’s far more likely that things will slip through the cracks. It’s also very difficult to track metrics by hand or by using multiple different pieces of software and spreadsheets. You’ll get a clearer picture of how successful your program is with the right tools.

‍Mentoring platform software has been created specifically to handle all aspects of running a mentorship program. With so many moving parts in mentorship programs, there quickly comes a point where manually handling everything is simply too difficult and far less efficient. Companies need to focus on the right things when running a mentorship program, and too much admin and metric tracking by hand can remove the focus from where it should be - on ensuring the success of every mentee and mentor in the program.

4. Design your program

Design your program around your goals and metrics, keeping in mind what your mentees and mentors will want to see. Look at how you’ll get people to sign up and how you’ll track activities and encourage continued progress. Think about how you will match people up. Look at how long you expect each mentorship to last. Create any training and promotional materials.

Add in how you’ll track your successes and your metrics to complete the picture.

Your mentoring software should allow you to implement a program design that works for you. After all, there is not a one size fits all to mentoring and your tools and program design will need to take that into account to facilitate communication and inspiration to create a successful program.

5. Onboard your mentors and mentees

Finally, bring on your first mentors and mentees. You’ll need to sell your program and encourage people to take part, which is why it’s important to be able to clearly spell out the benefits. Look at barriers to entry, too, and ensure people aren’t put off because they think it’s not for them, it’s too hard, or they don’t have the time.

6. Gather and incorporate feedback

Finally, learn from how your first participants progress through your system and take on any feedback they give you to improve for the next batch of participants. Keep learning and growing, and improving your mentorship program as your mentors and mentees continue to grow and learn within it.

7. Start reaping the benefits of mentoring software

Cloud-based mentoring software can manage the whole program for your business from start to finish, including matching up mentees with the right mentors and providing you with accurate statistics and metrics to measure success.

You’ll also be able to run training, organize meetings, provide support to mentors and mentees, and more. The right mentoring software platform will also have world-class security to protect your sensitive data, and enterprise-class integration with common apps and software that you’ll be likely to have already, including your CRM, Salesforce, and SAP.

With one single sign-in, you can manage your whole program from one place. Everything runs smoothly, with the system taking care of every aspect of managing and tracking your mentorship program for you.

You can have a tailored platform that works with your mentorship program, based on your aims and goals. With professional support, you can also integrate your mentoring software with programs you already use, such as your CRM and HR software. That shortens your learning curve and adds more functionality to your platform.

With AI-assisted matching of participants, you can be sure your people will benefit significantly from the relationships they build and enjoy a rich and satisfying mentor/mentee relationship.

Is my organization ready to invest in a mentoring platform?

If you’re struggling to manage the day-to-day running of your mentorship program, it could be time to invest in the right mentoring platform for your business.

‍Spreadsheets and manual systems can only get you so far before appointments start being missed, training doesn’t run smoothly, and the efficiency of your program begins to slip. With mentoring, it’s vital that mentees and mentors can find all the information they need, book chats, share feedback, and more. Without a mentoring platform in place, things can easily get lost, and instead of being a smooth experience, it can become an exercise in frustration.

A quality mentoring platform will be feature-rich, including forums, incentives for participation, chat and video functions, scheduling for mentoring sessions, and more.

This software creates a smooth journey through the mentorship process for everyone, including mentors, mentees, and the staff managing the mentorship program.

Overall, your company will benefit from a mentorship program that encourages participants to keep going and keep learning, which leads to higher success rates. You can show potential candidates and existing employees that they do have real opportunities to learn and grow, with the potential for promotion. The benefits of a combination of quality, professional software and a well-planned and run mentorship program can’t be overstated.

In addition, it’s simple to obtain reports and measure your outcomes, including whether you’ve achieved the goals you set out to achieve. There’s also a clear indicator of your return on investment in setting up a mentorship program. This can be a vital asset when reporting to the board or to stakeholders, and when looking to justify what you need for next year’s budget.

For businesses that embrace the idea of mentorship programs, the benefits are clear.

From Moving Ahead’s study, “mentoring is creating better gender diversity in the workplace, and enabling organizational cultures to become more inclusive and creative as a result."

The study also found that:

“87% of mentors and mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and have developed greater confidence.”

“82% believe that mentoring relationships help foster meaningful connections between mentors and mentees, across departments and the organization.”

“84% reported that mentoring relationships provide two-way inspiration for mentor and mentee.”

From the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workplace Happiness Survey: “More than 9 in 10 workers (91%) who have a mentor are satisfied with their jobs, including more than half (57%) who are “very satisfied.”

”The National Mentoring Day website also has some highly persuasive statistics on the benefits of mentoring, including:

“70% of small businesses that receive mentoring survive for five years or more, which is double the rate compared with non-mentored entrepreneurs.”

“67% of businesses reported an increase in productivity due to mentoring.”

“55% of businesses felt that mentoring had a positive impact on their profits.”

How to get started with an end-to-end mentoring solution

With MentorCloud, you get not just a mentoring software platform, but also a team of experienced professionals familiar with every aspect of running a mentorship program, including mentoring best practices.
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We’ll provide you with a mentorship platform that we’ll set up, design and tailor to your business. We will help you onboard your team and train your people to use the software, and we’ll give training to mentors and mentees to ensure they get the most out of your program. We set you up for success, right from the beginning. And we’re there to help you kick off your new mentorship program and sell it to your employees to encourage participation.

When mentees reach goals or complete their program, they get to celebrate their success and enjoy how far they’ve come. And we provide support for mentees and mentors at every step of the way.

When you need your metrics and ROI reports, it’s simple to see your success rates and see whether you’ve achieved your goals. What’s more, your data is completely secure with our world-class security.

Don’t rely on multiple spreadsheets and pieces of software to manage your mentorship program. It’s too important for that, and you have better things to do with your time. Instead, why not book a demo of MentorCloud’s platform and see how we can help you achieve success?