What Makes a Good Mentorship Program in 2026?

Updated: January 15, 2026

Learn what makes a good mentorship program in 2026. Explore key phases, essential elements, and how mentoring software like Brancher supports success.

If you're running or designing a mentoring program this year, you’re probably asking: what makes a good mentorship program that actually delivers results?

It’s a valid question. Mentorship has shifted from a “nice-to-have” to a business-critical function. In fact, 98% of Fortune 500 companies now run mentoring programs, and closer to home, Australian organisations are rapidly investing in mentorship to improve retention, DEI outcomes, and leadership pipelines.

But a good mentoring program doesn’t happen by accident. It’s designed with intent, launched with care, and measured with rigour. In this guide, we’ll walk through:

✅ Already managing a program with 20+ pairs? It’s time to consider mentoring software. Here’s why.

Table of Contents

• What Makes a Good Mentorship Program?
• Key Elements of a Successful Mentoring Program
• The Three Phases of Mentoring
  • Design Phase
  • Engage Phase
  • Evaluate Phase
• Why Mentoring Software Matters
• How Brancher Supports Each Phase
• Frequently Asked Questions
  
  
  

What Makes a Good Mentorship Program?

A good mentorship program is structured, intentional, and aligned to clear business goals. It doesn’t rely on goodwill alone; it’s built with processes that support mentor-mentee success from day one.

Here’s what the data shows:

• Organisations with mentoring programs had 18% better profits than average 
• Mentoring is number one on the list of L&D program areas for 2023
• More than 4 in 10 workers say they’ve considered quitting their jobs in the past three months since they don’t have a mentor

If you’re going to do mentoring, you need to do it well. That starts with the three core phases of success: design, engage, and evaluate.

What Are the Elements of a Good Mentorship Program?

These are the non-negotiables for a good mentorship program:

• Clear Purpose: Start with a business goal - whether it’s leadership development, onboarding, or retention. Tie mentoring directly to measurable outcomes.
• Structured Matching: Use value-aligned or skills-based matching, with room for participant input. This creates better compatibility and stronger engagement.
• Training and Onboarding: Equip both mentors and mentees with training on goal-setting, communication, and feedback before they begin.
• Consistent Communication: Set expectations for how often participants should meet and through which channels. Give them tools to stay on track.
• Progress Tracking: Monitor key metrics like goal completion, session frequency, and satisfaction to adapt and improve the program in real time.
• Closure and Reflection: Build in a formal end point with reviews, feedback, and recognition. This helps you gather insights and demonstrate impact.
• Recognition and Visibility: Share wins across your organisation. It boosts morale, reinforces positive behaviour, and increases program uptake.

These elements are what separate ad hoc initiatives from mentorship programs that actually drive results.

The Three Phases of Mentoring

The Design Phase: Assess Your Organisation’s Needs

Before you launch your mentoring program, you must ask yourself:

• What are the goals of your organisation? Do you wish to improve employee retention, diversity and inclusion outcomes, collaboration, knowledge sharing, career development, leadership capability, or employee engagement?
• Who will be involved in the program? 
• Who will be your key program sponsor, communications lead and project manager?
• Will you use mentoring software to streamline program management and increase your visibility of results and relationship success?
• What is your organisational definition of mentorship and what are your key mentoring principles?
• What will the eligibility criteria be for mentees and mentors?
• How will you recruit participants and collect their details?
• How will pairing be done? (Admin pairing or self-pairing)
• What pairing criteria will you use? Can your software provider assist you in designing the matching criteria?
• How long will the program go for?
• What training will be provided to mentors? 
• What support will be provided to mentees?
• How will participants set goals?
• How will people check in throughout the program? How do you measure success? 

You may want to bring in an expert Mentoring Program Manager to facilitate a Design Workshop with your key stakeholders to work through the questions above and align on key mentoring principles.

Some software providers such as Brancher will facilitate a complimentary Design Workshop during the implementation process so you don’t need to do the heavy lifting.

Look for a mentoring software provider who will ask you the following questions (or similar) in the sales process. This can help you to determine if the provider truly cares about your organisation (and is looking to implement a program that will deliver real results as opposed to hitting their sales target or KPI):

• If you’ve run a program before, what were your biggest pain points? (trying to understand whether they can genuinely add value)
• What is the broader context and culture of your organisation? (understanding how the program may need to be customised)
• Do you really want to roll out this mentoring program to X population, where is the biggest need for mentoring? (challenging the selection population)

Also, look for a mentoring software provider who will help to customise the platform for your needs. Many providers are 100% self-service with minimal customer support. Good mentoring providers will help you (or even do it for you). This means you can spend your time talking to internal stakeholders rather than configuring the back end of a mentoring tech platform.

Look for providers who will provide you with key design and implementation resources including:

• Mentee-mentor matching questions template
• Communications plan
• Project/implementation plan
• Video script (to launch the program)
• Launch webinar (hosted by the provider)  

The Engage Phase: Ensuring Participants Maintain Momentum

Within the Engage Phase, there are two steps:

• Launching the program
• Maintaining momentum

Launching the Program

When you launch the program, it’s one of the most exciting steps. But it can also be quite daunting. 

A mentoring program is a highly visible program - everyone can see if it’s successful or not. You need to ensure that your mentoring software provider will help you and your users through this process. 

• How does the mentoring platform work?
• Is it easy and intuitive to use?
• Will the provider do a demo of the platform to your staff?
• How will participants find their ideal mentor?
• What configuration matching and program options can you control?
• Does the platform automate matching, training, introductions, goal setting, keeping people on track and measuring success?
• Will you have to deal with anything manually?

With Brancher, you get a 45-minute launch webinar, automated mentor-mentee matching, and nudges every 30 days to keep people engaged. You’ll see everything in your admin portal - who’s meeting, who’s falling behind, and what needs attention.

As the program administrator, you get access to an admin portal where you can see how the relationships are tracked including which pairs are on track or off track. You can then proactively manage relationships and ensure everyone achieves their goals, including your organisation.

Once the mentoring program is launched, many software providers will stop their ‘human touch’ customer support. Brancher does things differently. We provide ongoing program management monthly check-ins and 6 monthly reviews.

Maintaining Momentum

We recognise that you’re busy, and whilst you have access to an admin portal where you can track success 24/7, we still want to meet with you for 30 minutes once per month to check in, share best practices, and help you prioritise your mentoring program management. Even if you’ve never run a mentoring program before, you can run a successful program with Brancher.

Without Brancher, customers need to employ a full-time staff member to manage their mentoring program. If your mentoring program will have more than 20 pairs, it’s time to consider mentoring software.

The Evaluate Phase: Measure the Program’s Success

Lastly, the mentoring software you use should allow you to easily measure your program’s success. At a minimum, the tool should allow you to:

• Monitor the  progress of every mentoring relationship - meeting frequency and satisfaction
• Track leading and lagging metrics (e.g. training completion and goal establishment vs. behaviour change and goal completion)
• Keep track of goals and objectives completion
• Showcase the program’s success to stakeholders to measure Return on Investment (ROI)
• Intervene when needed and rematch a mentor/mentee if required

Brancher’s evaluation tools include:

• Real-time progress dashboards
• Customisable pulse and wrap-up surveys
• Exportable reports for stakeholders

This data doesn’t just help you prove ROI. It helps you continuously improve your program and adapt to organisational needs.

Brancher provides live mentoring relationship health metrics so you can see and act on the program at any time. Through Brancher’s customisable check-in and relationship wrap-up surveys, you can take actionable steps to improve your mentorship program. This data will also allow you to prove how effective your mentoring program is in your organisation. 

Why Mentoring Software Matters

The larger your program, the harder it is to manage manually. Mentoring software helps you:

• Scale without sacrificing quality
• Automate the admin so you can focus on strategy
• Capture real-time data that’s impossible to gather via spreadsheets
• Ensure your mentors and mentees actually achieve their goals

Learn when to switch from manual to software-based mentoring.

How Brancher Supports Each Phase

Choosing the right mentoring software is crucial to maximising your organisation’s mentoring efforts. You need to choose a platform that meets your needs and effectively implements it so you can build transformative mentoring relationships within your organisation.

Book a demo with us today. We’ve helped organisations like Women With Disabilities Australia, the Government of South Australia, and Calm launch mentoring programs that scale and sustain over time. We’d love to show you how. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three phases of a good mentoring program?

The three phases are: Design, where you plan and structure the program; Engage, where you launch and manage momentum; and Evaluate, where you measure success and refine over time.

What role does mentoring software play in program success?

Mentoring software removes the manual workload, automates matching, tracks progress, and ensures your mentoring program delivers measurable outcomes at scale.

How do I measure mentoring program success?

You should track session frequency, satisfaction, goal completion, and behavioural outcomes. The best platforms offer live dashboards and survey tools for this.