What if you could improve employee engagement, development, and retention all with one people program? That’s the power of employee mentorship.

Whether your organization is completely new to employee mentorship programs and looking to implement one for the first time or you’re looking to refine an existing program, this guide will offer our best tips for creating sustainable and smooth processes that set your team up for success.

What is Employee Mentorship?

When it comes to employee retention, engagement, and development, mentorship programs are one of the most effective (and often underutilized) assets an organization can put in place.

At its core, employee mentorship means pairing a teammate looking to develop some aspect of their skills and experience with a colleague who can offer support and guidance.

While some mentorship relationships may develop between employees informally, more and more organizations are creating formal mentorship programs to better support and engage their teams.

The Impact of Employee Mentorship Programs

A 2023 report by mentorcliQ found that 99% of Fortune 500 companies now have structured mentorship programs, up from 84% in the prior year.

While formal mentorship programs require planning and resources — which one may argue a larger company may be more equipped to dedicate toward mentoring — companies of all sizes use mentorship to level up their business.

The impact of employee mentorship is wide-ranging. From improving retention rates to driving productivity, there are few areas of a business that don’t stand to benefit from the existence of a mentorship program within an organization.

In instances where an employee may move on and a role must be backfilled, costs have been shown to be steep. In 2022, SHRM found the average cost-per-hire was $4,700—with potential for expenses being significantly higher, with some estimates being up to three to four times the position’s salary.

Professional development is an important component of any retention-related strategies. 91% of employees with a mentor say they are satisfied with their jobs. A LinkedIn Learning report found that 94% of of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.

Mentorship programs are also an effective way to build connections across departments, creating opportunities to collaborate between colleagues who may otherwise not work closely together. This can be a major boost to knowledge sharing.

How to Structure A Mentorship Program

The numbers don’t lie: mentorship brings tremendous value to all kinds of organizations. But what’s next? How do you start planning a mentorship program? This section outlines the four critical steps to building a program that thrives.

Understand Your Why

First: understand your “why.” Every organization’s needs are different. What are the key reasons you want to move forward with intentional, structured mentorship? This may be to create more connection between employees, supercharge career development, share knowledge, or any number of reasons.

Identify a few key reasons for your team, and socialize that with everyone participating.

As you begin to do interest checks or share plans for an upcoming mentorship program, make sure to emphasize those key reasons.

Establish Your Cadence and Timeline

Next, it’s time to nail down structure.

What will the timeline of the program be?

For a company like AppDirect, mentorship cycles happen twice a year, with each cycle running for four months. During that time, mentor and mentee matches are encouraged to meet twice a month for half an hour each.

Here at Donut, we’ve had many conversations about mentorship programs and have found our customers agree that set timelines are important for participation. (They love our Peer Mentorship prebuilt Journey, which runs for 26 weeks and has participants meeting about once a month.)

Some other suggestions on structure:

• Consider what can be automated and choose a platform that will support the program, not detract from it.
• Plan for soliciting feedback from participants. This can be in the form of a monthly survey, a final debrief with a member of the People team, etc.
• Some teams find value in having a cohort Slack channel or other group connection for participants of a given cycle.
• The program’s structure should be established before any official recruiting on mentors and mentees begins. That way, everyone will be clear on the commitment they’ll be making and will be more likely to stick with it.
• It’s also a good idea to create guides for participating mentors and mentees with outlines of the program or other beneficial resources.

Create a Process for Mentor/Mentee Matching

Have a documented process for matching mentors and mentees. Participants may be solicited by a form tool of your choice such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey, or enrolled via a tool like Donut Journeys.

Plan to collect more information than simply if someone is looking to mentor or be mentored. Other information such as team, location (likely identifiable via HR tools without needing to directly ask an employee) and individual responses around personal goals will be key when it comes to making matches.

Roll the program out and begin to collect sign ups. Internally marketing the program (and your “why”) is a key part of getting great engagement. Make sure to do this with enthusiasm.

When making matches, consider time zones and locations as this may factor into availability or be an added boost to collaboration or greater cultural awareness.

Some other factors to remain mindful of:

• Pair employees who otherwise may not have opportunities to work together for greater cross-team collaboration.
• Pair high-performing employees with strong mentors who will be compatible for development.

Offer Guidance to Participants

Alongside clear expectations for program timing and cadence, it’s also a good idea for program planners to consider what resources may support mentors and mentees. These might be in the form of suggested topics, articles, sample questions, etc. Share this out when introducing pairs to each other.

Employee Mentorship Program Challenges

We’ve talked to a lot of people leaders about mentorship and over time have found some common challenges. Let’s review some areas to be mindful of as you put your mentorship program into motion.

Lack of Balanced Interest

Mentorship programs usually aren’t mandatory. And often, there are more people looking to join as mentees rather than mentors.

Mentor recruitment may need to be active. Buy-in from executives and high-level leadership can be an important asset here, where they can encourage rising leaders and more senior team members to participate.

This issue is also addressed by further cycles of a program. Previous mentees may choose to pay it forward by later rejoining as mentors. An important way to encourage this is by ensuring participants have a positive, supported experience and that feedback is used to improve future cycles.

Issues with Mentor/Mentee Participation

Mentors not checking in? Meetings getting rescheduled or missed? Buy-in from mentors and mentees is essential for mentorship to be successful.

With other important work tasks on teammates’ plates, it can be easy for mentorship to be deprioritized and associated tasks to get missed.

Ultimately, the most effective way to counter this is by having checkpoints throughout a mentorship cycle. This can be automated, such as sending feedback polls and tasks through Donut Journeys. Organizers of the program will be able to view responses.

However, sometimes directly reaching out to a teammate to see how things are going and to discuss their availability or other challenges may be the most effective route.

The commitment of the program should also be emphasized when collecting sign ups, which will strengthen follow-ups once the program has kicked off.

Effective Remote Communication

In our increasingly distributed workplaces, it becomes more and more likely for mentorship pairings to involve some quantity of remote communication.

Effective remote communication is a skill, and when it is lacking participants may find interactions more difficult and less fulfilling.

Here are some tips for mentors and mentees:

• Avoid distractions by setting aside time and limiting interruptions during mentor and mentee meetings.
• Communicate about camera on or camera off. Don’t make assumptions about people’s preferences or access needs. Discuss what will be most supportive for mutual collaboration and be mindful that it doesn’t have to be the same every time. Keep it as an open topic of discussion.
• Keep a shared document for notes. Slack Canvas or Notion can be great places for mentors and mentees to add agenda items or follow-ups.
• Use a first meeting to discuss individual approaches to Slack, email, and meetings, and find common ground. Is Slack the best way to get in touch? Is a repeating meeting slot best? Is it better for a mentor/mentee pair to check in ahead of scheduling their meetings as the time may change? Again, don’t assume.

Post-Program Action Items

It’s important to collect feedback after the conclusion of the program. Depending on bandwidth this may be in the form of surveys with follow up conversations as-needed or intentional 1:1s with each participant.

Program organizers should plan to review feedback and discuss what changes may be beneficial in the implementation of future programs.

This will also make employees feel heard and result in them being more likely to participate in the future.

Over time, it may also be a good idea to build questions about mentorship and development into broader company surveys and pulse checks to measure the long-term impact of these programs.

In doing so, you will likely see, as many organizations do, a serious boost to your employee engagement as your team is better connected and set up for success and growth.

Conclusion

Mentorship and its long-term impact go far beyond a simple professional development program. When done right, it can be the secret ingredient behind years of team success.

With intentional structure and care in its implementation, mentorship may be the key to offering disengaged employees a path of continued growth in their current role.

Make sure to understand the “why”s that connect to the needs of an organization and build from there. When sharing the established program timeline and cadence, emphasize those key reasons for the program to connect with potential participants.

Remember to consider the unique challenges the program may encounter, but also be mindful of reflecting on potential challenges before, during, and after the program as there will be new insights to be had at each point in time.

As more mentors and mentees participate and feedback is used to refine future program cycles, a well-constructed mentorship program may ultimately become a long-term pillar of company culture.

Ready to start building a mentorship program that delivers real results? Check out our Prebuilt Journeys and discover the ability to automate the designing, implementing, and scaling a mentorship initiative tailored to your organization’s unique needs and goals.

If you have questions or need guidance as you kick off your next mentorship program, contact us by clicking the purple Donut icon in the lower right corner. You’ve got this!