Practical guide on how to restart a mentoring program and relaunch with stronger matches, engagement, and ROI.
Your mentoring program died. Maybe it limped along for months before finally flatting out, or perhaps it never gained traction in the first place. Either way, you're sitting there wondering how to restart a mentoring program without repeating the same mistakes that killed it the first time.
Here's the truth: most mentoring programs struggle, and most organisations make the same fundamental errors when trying to resurrect them. But you don't have to be part of that pattern.
Most mentoring programs fail because of poor matching, lack of structure, and no measurable outcomes. Restarting one successfully means auditing what went wrong, setting clear objectives, designing a structured framework, piloting before scaling, and using the right technology to keep it on track. Brancher helps organisations relaunch dormant mentoring programs with science-based matching, built-in engagement tools, and proven ROI.
Before you can restart mentorship program initiatives, you need to understand what went wrong. The most common killers aren't what you think:
The good news? An inactive mentoring program that failed gives you data. Use it.
Start with your post-mortem. Pull the numbers:
Don't skip this step. Your failure data is worth more than generic best practices.
Here's your roadmap to re-activate mentoring program success:
Week 1: Conduct stakeholder interviews. Talk to five people who participated in the previous program and five who didn't. Ask what would make them participate in a new version.
Week 2: Define clear program objectives with senior leadership. Not fluffy goals like "improve employee development," but specific outcomes like "increase internal promotion rates by 15%" or "reduce graduate turnover by 20%."
Week 3: Design your mentoring framework. Create structured conversation guides, milestone checkpoints, and clear expectations for both parties.
Week 4: Build your matching criteria. Develop a proper assessment that considers career goals, personality types, and availability - not just who's senior enough to mentor.
You can also partner with us (Brancher) to be your mentoring partner. Brancher uses skills, values and more to match mentoring participants. This way, your program is more likely to succeed.
Week 5: Seek feedback on your communications, matching approach and training material with a selected group of people. These should include some of your most reliable employees who can provide honest feedback.
Week 6: Gather feedback and refine your approach. This is where you'll discover the practical issues that look different on paper.
Week 7: Finalise your mentoring program relaunch checklist. Include training materials, communication templates, and tracking systems.
Alternatively use Brancher, for pre-built training, resources, templates, matching forms and tracking systems.
Week 8: Train your mentors and launch to your first full cohort of 25-50 pairs.
If you’re wondering whether you need mentoring software or not, here's the reality check: if your previous program failed because of poor matching and unclear objectives, the right mentoring platform can actually solve these core issues.
And if you're scaling beyond 20 pairs, manual tracking becomes not just unworkable; it becomes the reason programs fail.
When you're restarting a mentoring program, you need more than basic matching software. You need a platform designed by organisational psychologists who understand why programs fail.
Brancher is the only mentoring platform globally that matches based on personality and values - achieving an average of 98% matching satisfaction because they tackle the root cause of failed mentoring relationships.
Here's what makes Brancher different:
The Queensland Department of Tourism and Sport's DDG Corporate, Sarah Vandersee, puts it perfectly: "The platform is absolutely fantastic. I think the Brancher platform should be rolled out in other areas of Government. The platform has been quick and easy, and maintained program engagement."
When you're investing in a program restart, choose technology that addresses why your first attempt failed; not just basic matching and tracking.
The biggest mistake organisations make is thinking they need to mandate participation. Instead, make it irresistible:
Your revival strategy should focus on three non-negotiables:
Programs die in the follow-through phase. Here's how to avoid that:
Forget satisfaction surveys as your primary success metric. Track these instead:
These metrics prove business impact and secure ongoing support.
You now have a practical framework for how to restart a mentoring program that delivers real business value. The question isn't whether your organisation needs mentoring—it's whether you're ready to do it properly this time.
Start with that forensic audit of your previous program. Those insights will save you months of trial and error and hundreds of hours of wasted effort.
Your people are waiting for development opportunities that actually matter. Give them a mentoring program that works.
👉 Want to see how it works in practice? Book a demo with Brancher and discover how a trusted mentoring platform can transform your mentoring program.
You don’t need to wait long. Once you’ve completed a proper program audit and gathered feedback, you can begin relaunch planning immediately. Most organisations can restart within 2–3 months.
Both can work. If previous participants gave positive feedback, re-engage them as champions. Otherwise, prioritise new participants with clear onboarding to reset expectations.
About 10% of your company’s total workforce is a good goal for a pilot. You want to start small but it needs to be large enough that you’re getting a representative sample size for feedback.
HR should act as facilitators, not micromanagers. Their role is to set clear structures, provide resources, and track outcomes — not control every meeting.
Review goals annually at minimum. Ideally, use quarterly check-ins to confirm alignment with organisational priorities and adjust where necessary.