How to Maintain a Successful Mentoring Program

Any organization can start a mentoring program, but simply starting a program does not guarantee that it will be successful. Your goal when developing any business strategy should be its continued success and mentoring is no different. To ensure that your mentoring program has a long and successful run, there are a few steps that you need to take.

How to Maintain a Successful Mentoring Program in 6 Easy Steps:

1. Define Clear Business Objectives

The first step may seem like a no brainer, but you would be surprised at how many organizations don’t take their business needs into consideration when implementing a mentoring program. Not only does this help you to decide what specific types of mentoring will be available to your employees, but it also helps you define and measure your quantitative data. This data is extremely important to managing your program successfully.

2. Have an Initial Plan

Are you really able to start any program in your organization without an initial plan? We don’t think so, and mentoring is no different. If you don’t not have a mentoring plan in place before the program even begins, there is no chance there being any sustainability. This plan will also help you to develop your success metrics which will tell you whether your plan is on track or your you need to do some redefining.

3. Engage Everyone from The Beginning

Don’t wait until you have everything started to begin engagement with the participating employees. Engagement should start from Day 1. Putting a communications plan in place is a great way to ensure that this step isn’t missed. One way of increasing engagement from the beginning is by setting up training for all participants and their managers. This training should have clear expectations for each role, whether it is the mentor, mentee, or manager involved.

5. Establish Checkpoints for Continued Communication

Communication can’t just happen at the beginning of the mentoring program. You should be communicating with each employee throughout the duration of their time in the program. A great way to do this is by setting up checkpoints. These checkpoints will give you a better idea of which parts of the programs are successful, which employees are truly engaged, and who needs continued training to develop a successful mentoring relationship.

6. Use Data to Manage Your Program

Starting a mentoring programming and not managing the continued operation of it will prove to be very unsuccessful for your organization. Like with any business strategy, you need to use the data you receive throughout the process to manage the program. This data will be quantitative and qualitative. The steps to measure this data and enforce outcomes based on it should be defined upfront and taken throughout the entire program.

At Insala, we help you gain the tools to follow each of these steps from very beginning of your mentoring program. To find out more about the solutions available to your organization, please request a demo.