Over the past decade, we have seen an increase in the number of organizations that want to incorporate mentoring into their culture. This is because mentoring continuously proves to be effective as an employee engagement strategy. Mentoring also facilitated employee development and internal networking. With these types of benefits, it’s no surprise that organizations are focusing on how to start a mentoring program.
While the benefits of a successful mentoring program are important, it can be difficult to see or even prove the results. There may even be a disconnect between participants and program administrators when it comes to success. Satisfied ratings from the mentors and mentees may not reflect meeting business objectives. This can be a real problem when looking at the ROI of your mentoring program.
To resolve these challenges, you need a plan for measuring the success of your mentoring program.
The Importance of Measuring
We conducted a study that found that 40% of participants didn’t know how successful their mentoring program was. This is alarming because without measuring success, there is a lack of quality assurance in any program. Further, no proof of success makes it difficult to prove that your mentoring program brings a worthwhile ROI to the organization.
Measuring the success of your mentoring programs ensures you, your admins, and your participants that the program is of high quality. It also shows any higher-ups and stakeholders that the program is worth the investment.
Some additional benefits of success include the ability to…
- Set clearly defined goals and objectives.
- See the performance and progress of the mentee.
- Gauge the necessary time and effort needed for each relationship.
Creating a Plan for Measuring Success
When measuring the success of your mentoring program, there are a few steps that need to be taken. Following these steps will ensure accurate and product measurement of success of your mentoring program.
1. Identify the objectives of the program.
You need to set objectives before you begin your program. Identifying your objectives first allows you to choose the right type of mentoring for your organization. It also gives you the basis from which you will measure success.
Some possible objectives include:
Taking the time to determine and document your business objectives gives you a 95% higher chance of success. This makes it one of the most important steps to measuring the success of your mentoring program.
2. Prove objectives have been met.
You need to decide how you will measure success based off your business objectives. For instance, if your objective is to improve employee retention, determine the success of the program based on achieving a certain percentage of retention. This will show you whether or not your mentoring program is achieving its objectives.
3. Decide how to collect results.
There are a few different ways you can collect results based on your business objectives. For employee retention, you can measure the retention rates of your mentors and mentees with mentoring software. For career development, you will probably want to survey the mentors and mentees. To do this, decide how and when to send out surveys.
You should send surveys when they are most likely to be opened and completed. Surveys should also be short and relevant to the programs. To ensure they are accurate representations of program success, make sure you don’t send them out sooner than objectives can be achieved. These surveys can also be easily managed with mentoring software.
4. Determine what to do with your results.
Generally, you will either have good outcomes or poor outcomes of mentoring in the workplace. Your results don’t necessarily define the future of your program, however. You need to decide what to do with them to ensure a successful mentoring program in the future.
If your results are good, continue running your mentoring program as you were. Continuous effort is required to keep high retention and great employee engagement. You will also be continuously recruiting new mentees, so be sure to keep your successful program consistent.
If you get poor results, don’t give up. Your program just needs some adjustment.
Take feedback from surveys or conduct participant interview to find out what the source of the problem is. Once this problem is identified, correct your program to work better in the future. Again, continuous effort is needed for successful mentoring programs.
Determining what to do with the results is important for the effectiveness of the program. 80% of employees believe management won’t act on internal survey results. If you follow their expectations, they will become demotivated not only in their mentorships but in your organization.
However, if you actively work to improve your program, you also improve the employee experience. Happy employees will increase overall employee engagement and promote the best company culture possible.
Insala is dedicated to promoting talent development in organizations. To learn more about implementing a mentoring program, request a demo today.
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