Mentorship can be a key component of creating a great organisational culture. It's rare that a mentoring program that is being run for the first time is successful. That's because of the Dunning-Kruger effect, we are naturally confident humans and think "how hard can it be?".
Turns out, running a mentoring program can be pretty challenging. That's why organisations are partnering with experts such as Brancher who know how to run effective mentoring programs.
So, how do you create an effective mentoring program that will provide you the benefits? High-quality mentoring programs tend to have a few things in common. In this article, we’ll discuss what makes a mentoring program effective and the signs that your program isn’t working.
3 Signs Your Mentorship Program Isn’t Working
While mentorship programs play a pivotal role in cultivating a thriving organisation, not all mentorship initiatives achieve the desired impact. But how can you tell if your mentorship program isn’t effective? Let’s take a look at some signs.
Lack of Strategic Alignment
Have you considered the specific needs of your team? If your mentorship program isn’t built with specific business and employee-centric goals in mind, this lack of strategic alignment will hinder your impact.
Some critical considerations include:
- Alignment to overall business objectives, such as increasing retention or engagement.
- Support from executive leadership.
- Alignment to talent objectives, such as increasing access to development opportunities or improving workplace culture.
- Clear target outcomes, like engagement survey data, retention goals, or DEI goals.
- A target audience for the mentorship program, whether it's for early talent, people managers/leadership, new employee onboarding, underrepresented diverse employees, or available to everyone.
- Intentional initiatives for the specific needs and desires of your team members, based on feedback or surveys.
Limited Reach, Adoption, or Enrollment
- Evaluate the number of participants as a percentage of the talent segment you’re targeting. If your reach is limited, this is a clear sign your mentorship program isn’t landing.
- Consider the range of seniority levels, geographies, and roles your corporate mentorship program is available to. Is it worth considering expanding access?
- Are mentorship program communications getting drowned out in emails? Consider integrating program communications into the tools your team uses every day—such as Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Calendar.
- Lastly, examine the discoverability of your program. Is it integrated into overall HR and talent development strategies, presented at onboarding, or discussed in high-visibility meetings?
Administrative Inefficiencies
If you’re trying to manage everything manually, your organisation’s mentorship program is bound to fail. Doing things manually can lead to several problems, including:
- Poorly matched mentors and mentees
- Unconscious bias in matching participants
- Poor evaluation and tracking of mentoring program success
- Lack of engagement of mentees and mentors
Evaluate time savings and scalability regarding executing your efforts manually versus with the support of a mentorship platform. Ensure flexibility and scalability with multiple types of mentorship offerings. Ideally, you should be able to run multiple cohorts simultaneously for maximum impact while adapting to participants’ seniority levels or roles.
RELATED: Brancher's ROI: Understanding the ROI of Mentoring
No Plan to Measure Return on Investment (ROI)
Consistent measurement of the ROI of your corporate mentorship program is vital to demonstrate value and secure ongoing support. This might start with spreadsheets; however, to scale and effectively measure impact, consider utilising the right technology platform. A good tool won’t just help measure impact; it will also streamline the entire mentorship program’s deployment.
What You Need for an Effective Mentoring program
Experts generally agree on the critical elements of a mentoring program; however, they may disagree on specific numbers or areas of focus. Mentoring is not quite the same as coaching; although related, traditional mentoring involves a senior person imparting guidance and knowledge to their mentee. Modern mentoring may involve matching people based on skills, personality, values and more.
Coaching typically focuses more on an objective party encouraging a person to unleash their gifts and talents. Most often, coaches are external to the organisation. There is overlap between coaching and mentoring; thus, the best mentors will use coaching techniques during their mentoring.
We have honed the critical elements of an excellent mentoring program down to the following:
1. Clear, Defined Goals
A strong mentoring program is established with specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that can gauge its overall success. When structured with clear and realistic goals, it will yield better results over time.
Setting attainable and measurable goals will guide both participants and facilitators throughout the program. An effective program should also encourage each individual mentoring pair to set their own specific goals to ensure both parties maximise their experience.
2. Measurable Results
Those clear goals and objectives won’t be useful unless you measure your program’s progress against them. Being able to quantify your program upon completion is essential for determining whether you met your goals. An excellent mentoring program continuously measures progress as it runs.
Ultimately, mentoring should never be static; it evolves with each new partnership. Having measurable results will help you continually grow your mentoring program through various methods—such as conducting surveys at different points or tracking former participants' career trajectories compared to non-participants.
3. Strong Mentor-Mentee Matches
At the heart of every good mentoring program is the mentor-mentee relationship. Mentees require the right mentor to engage in open and productive dialogue. Matches made manually by program administrators aren’t always ideal as they can be prone to unconscious bias.
Brancher’s mentoring matching algorithm, however, takes a person’s values, personality and skills into account when making matches.
4. Additional Tools and Resources
Another indicator of a strong mentoring program is offering essential tools and resources that support mentoring pairs. Education is vital for continued growth; therefore, providing monthly business education webinars focusing on topics relevant to emerging leaders can enhance learning opportunities for participants.
Additional resources should keep a mentoring program on track from start to finish. Besides assessments that help mentees set goals, running orientations and periodic surveys can assess overall success while monthly reminders help pairs self-regulate.
5. Career Development Focus
An effective mentoring program encourages participants to grow professionally and advance within an organisation while investing in key talent helps build confident leaders who can navigate workplace challenges effectively.
6. Guide Mentoring Relationships
Mentors and mentees will need guidance as they begin their relationships. Establish clear rules for participants regarding interaction frequency (in-person, phone, video conference) and specify instances when interactions must occur—such as conferences where both may attend for face-to-face interaction. This can be achieved through the Mentoring Agreement, which participants complete at the start of their mentoring journey.
Your Role as the Program Administrator
As the program administrator, you need to be present throughout the relationship, not just at its start and end. Brancher’s dashboard tools allow you to monitor the relationship and steer it in the right direction. Call us today to schedule a demo of how our mentoring software works so you can see our tools in action.