Why You Need a Clear Mentoring Strategy (2026 Guide)

Updated: 01/12/2026

The business case for mentoring has never been clearer. In just a couple of years, there has been an almost 17% increase in Fortune 500 companies that now offer mentoring programs to their employees. Mentoring benefits to employees and the organisation are undeniable, making it a valuable investment for learning and development.

TL;DR

A mentoring strategy turns mentoring from an informal activity into a deliberate business lever.

When mentoring is aligned to organisational goals, supported by structure, and measured properly, it drives capability, retention, and leadership development. Without strategy, mentoring becomes inconsistent, difficult to scale, and hard to justify. A clear mentoring strategy ensures mentoring delivers measurable value for both people and the organisation.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Mentoring Strategy?
  • What Happens When Mentoring Lacks Strategy?
• Guide to Setting Up Your Mentoring Strategy
  • Step 1: Identify Your Program Goals and Objectives
  • Step 2: Establish Mentee and Mentor Eligibility
  • Step 3: Set Up Recruitment and Communications
  • Step 4: Define Program Evaluation
  • Step 5: Program Implementation 
• Brancher: Mentoring Solution to Reduce Admin Time

Successful mentoring starts with a strategy. Having a clear mentoring strategy before you launch allows you to establish the goals and objectives of the program, which can be used to support mentors and mentees in understanding their roles. Programs without clear objectives, strong support for participants, and well-thought-out timelines tend to under-deliver expected results and lead to resistance for future mentoring cohorts..

This is a common reason why mentoring programs fail. If you want the mentoring program to succeed, investing time in establishing clear objectives, timelines, and a strategy is needed. 

What Is a Mentoring Strategy?

A mentoring strategy is a structured approach to designing, delivering, and measuring mentoring so it supports clear organisational goals. It defines why mentoring exists, who it is for, how it is run, and how success is measured.

Without a mentoring strategy, mentoring tends to be informal, inconsistent, and difficult to scale. With one, mentoring becomes a deliberate capability-building tool that supports workforce development, retention, and leadership pathways over time.

What Happens When Mentoring Lacks Strategy?

When mentoring lacks strategy, it quickly becomes inconsistent and difficult to sustain. Pairings are often based on availability rather than purpose, expectations are unclear, and outcomes are rarely measured. Over time, participation drops off because neither mentors nor mentees are confident about what the program is meant to achieve or how success is defined.

Without a clear strategy, mentoring also struggles to scale. What works for a small pilot rarely holds up across teams, locations, or cohorts. The result is well-intentioned effort with limited impact, where mentoring exists in name but fails to meaningfully support capability development, retention, or leadership readiness.

Here at Brancher, we want your mentoring program to succeed. This is why we’ve created this 2026 guide to help you set up your mentoring strategy. Read on for more information. 

Guide to Setting Up Your Mentoring Strategy

You’re already a step closer to launching your mentoring program for your organisation. But to cement your program’s success, you’ll need to create a mentoring strategy through careful planning. 

We’ll work together with you to properly design your mentoring program for success. Here are the key strategies you need to establish before launching your mentoring program: 

Step 1: Identify Your Program Goals and Objectives

Every strategy begins with determining your program’s goals and objectives. In this part of your mentoring strategy, we usually ask a couple of questions: 

• What is your strategic context?
• What is the name of your mentoring program? 

The first question we ask aims to get to know more about your goals and objectives for having a mentoring program. We want to know what your organisation is about as well as your future objectives for your employees. This also gives us a chance to know more about your audience and what their pain points are. 

Meanwhile, the second question allows us to help support your organisation in marketing the program to your target audience. It’s best to have a deep understanding of your employees and the individuals likely to participate in the program. It would also be helpful to know their developmental needs and motivations for participating in a mentoring program. 

Together, we’ll establish your program’s objectives and translate them into a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. The information gathered at this stage allows us to create mentoring objectives that can be used to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for future program monitoring and reporting. 

Step 2: Establish Mentee and Mentor Eligibility 

The next step involves identifying who can sign up as a mentor and mentee in the program. This is an essential step as it can pave the way for the program’s success. You’ll need to identify the candidates who will be part of your program and how you plan to match them together. 

This step includes identifying your matching criteria and how you can match participants. Brancher’s science-backed mentoring software allows you to match participants based on their values and attitudes. This is done through a Personality and Values Questionnaire that determines the wants and needs of participants in the program. Their career aspirations, personal interests, and industry experience are carefully analysed before matching with the right mentor or mentee. 

By using Brancher’s software, you can streamline this process and eliminate unconscious bias in matching candidates. In a previous article, we identified how unconscious bias can lead to poorly matched pairs and how this can lead to frustration. We can eliminate this through the help of our mentoring platform. 

Step 3: Set Up Recruitment and Communications

The success of your mentoring program largely depends on how well you promote it in your organisation. Even if you have a well-designed program, it won’t get very far without program promotion and mentor recruitment. This is why we’re here to help in setting up your program’s recruitment and communication channels. 

One way we encourage the promotion of the program is by creating a short launch video, which doesn’t last over five minutes and generally features a key sponsor or “face” of the program, clearly articulating the value of participating. It’s also recommended to establish communication channels that will be used for the mentoring program. This can be through an eDM (Electronic Direct Mail), text messages through specific departments, and internal advertising.   

A good promotional strategy is to let potential participants know the benefits they get out of mentoring. Some individuals do not know what mentoring programs are about since they are trapped in the notion of traditional mentoring. By taking time to showcase how mentoring can be well worth their time and effort, more individuals will be keen on participating. 

In addition to marketing, this is also a step when the needed internal arrangements will be finalised. This includes identifying the following:

• Key points of contact for roles and responsibilities (e.g. Implementation manager, “The Face” of the program, Program sponsor, etc.)
• Key dates (The implementation plan timeline)
• Program structure (How matches will be made, Number of users, Maximum number of mentees/mentors, etc.)
• Training tools that will be offered 
• Data and resource management (Including a logo, Custom resources, etc.)
• Pairing criteria

Establishing these things can help the mentoring program have a smooth flow whenever problems arise. 

Step 4: Define Program Evaluation

Another step in your mentoring strategy that you should not miss out on is the program evaluation phase, where you can understand how the program measures up to your expectations. 

Running a mentorship program is not cheap. Aside from the financial costs included, a dedicated administrator will allocate time to set up the program and make sure it runs with no problems. To ensure that a program is running smoothly, three metrics need to be put into consideration: 

• The program itself
• The mentoring connection
• The individuals involved

The continuous monitoring of these factors can play a significant role in ensuring the program is effective. This is why it’s recommended to have frequent check-ins throughout the program instead of its commencement and conclusion. Because of the amount of time and work needed for this, the organisation needs to assign an individual to be the program administrator, who will take control of the program. 

Step 5: Program Implementation 

When all of these steps have been taken care of, it’s finally time to launch the program. This is the point in the program when the participants should be trained and matched with a mentor or mentee. But this does not mean the work is over. 

The work of a program administrator does not end at launch. To ensure that the program becomes successful, administrators need to establish a checkpoint to evaluate the paired participants. The goals of the participants need to be identified in the Mentoring Agreement so it can be used to check that the goals of the mentor and mentee are achieved. 

When it’s time to end the mentoring relationship, the administrator can facilitate the transition as the participants reflect upon what they learned. They can also gather feedback on the program and its process to use for further improvement.

Clearly explaining the “wrap up” process, and ensuring the buy-in of participants throughout the length of the program is no easy feat; but a strategic approach to launching and management will remove a significant amount of this burden. 

Brancher: Mentoring Solution to Reduce Admin Time

Establishing a formal mentoring program can be a tough process, but one that your organisation cannot do without. To help streamline the process, Brancher’s mentoring software is an ally you can trust. 

Brancher helps large-scale organisations and government groups by equipping its program administrators with the necessary tools needed for a successful mentoring program. One thing that sets us apart from other mentoring platforms is that we guide our partners from the start. We’re always here to support your mentoring needs.

Brancher clients save over 82% of the admin time required to launch and run a successful program, and our experience with best-practice can help a new, or existing program reach new heights, deeply imbedding a culture of mentoring in your organisation. 

Don’t let the complexity of running a mentoring program stop you. Get Brancher and see the value we bring to your program. Call us today for a free demo. Or better yet, check out our free tools and templates to help you with your mentoring strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a mentoring strategy?

A mentoring strategy is a structured approach to designing, delivering, and measuring mentoring programs so they align with organisational goals. It defines purpose, participants, structure, success measures, and governance.

2. Why do organisations need a mentoring strategy?

Without a strategy, mentoring programs often lack consistency, struggle to scale, and fail to demonstrate impact. A strategy ensures mentoring supports priorities like capability development, retention, succession planning, or cultural change.

3. How does a mentoring strategy differ from a mentoring program?

A mentoring program is the initiative itself. A mentoring strategy is the framework that guides why the program exists, how it is designed, how success is measured, and how it evolves over time.

4. What should be included in a mentoring strategy?

A mentoring strategy typically includes objectives, target cohorts, mentoring models, matching approach, program structure, mentor capability requirements, and success metrics.

5. How do you measure the success of a mentoring strategy?

Success is measured through outcomes rather than activity alone. This can include participation quality, capability development, internal mobility, retention, engagement, and feedback from mentors and mentees.