What do Google, Unilever, and Citibank have in common? Like 98% of Fortune 500 companies, they all invest deeply in formal mentorship programs. Knowing how to implement effective mentorship programs is a hallmark of successful businesses, cutting across industry, organizational structure, and size. That’s not surprising. Strong mentor-mentee relationships are good for business: They help scale institutional knowledge. They prepare high-potential employees for future leadership roles. And they underpin professional networks, empowering mentors and mentees alike to leverage their relationships to do better work.

Why mentorship programs matter so much

Mentorship programs enjoy such widespread adoption, particularly among top performing enterprises, for one simple reason: they work.

In addition to supporting career development for mentees, mentorship programs come with serious business impact. They can improve everything from employee retention and engagement to knowledge sharing and cross-department connection. Formal mentorship programs have been linked to desirable business outcomes like: 

• Strong long-term leadership skills at the organizational level, helping teams continue to promote talented people into open leadership roles as more senior leaders progress or retire. 
• Improved diversity and equity outcomes, as formal and informal mentorship programs alike can elevate people who may have historically been excluded or underrepresented from the leadership track. 
• More effective cross-functional collaboration and knowledge exchange, particularly across organizational leveling systems. Mentorship programs have been found to be as good for mentors as they are for mentees in terms of career growth and learning. 

Of course, not all mentorship programs are the same, or carry the same impact.

What makes a mentorship program successful? Here are 5 ways to supercharge your programming:

How to create high-impact coaching, sponsorship, and mentor programs for your team

Make it easy to enroll as a mentor or mentee

People are the most important part of any successful mentorship program — incentivize  participation with an enrollment experience that is streamlined and accessible.

Some ways you can make things easier are:

• Clear criteria: Who is eligible? What will the time commitment be? These are things that participants should know before they  sign up. Be sure to set expectations for both prospective mentors and mentees
  
• Simplified enrollment: Use a tool like Donut Journeys to easily collect crucial information from participants. Our customizable intake form makes it easy to set whatever question you need. Use them for everything from asking about interested parties’ areas of expertise to learning about what they’re looking to get out of the program.
• Sign-up flows that integrate with tools people already use: Team members are more likely to engage with information when it’s presented where they already do their day-to-day work. If your team works in Slack, consider using Slack to promote your program and send out reminders
  

Get people excited about coaching and being coached

Make sure to socialize news about your mentorship program across the organization, starting earlier than you think you may need to — the program kickoff date will arrive sooner than expected!

Things to consider when getting the word out:

• Find program champions: From company leadership to meeting hosts, find people who are excited about mentorship and likely to inspire others to get involved. 
• Share the benefits: Consider the different things a mentorship program might offer to different teammates and make sure to include that in your messaging. For instance, in a larger organization, the opportunity to connect with and learn from members of other departments may carry serious appeal.
  
• Send reminders and updates in places where they will be read and noticed: What should be a Slack message? What might belong in an information packet? Make sure to give this some thought!

Create a culture of accountability around mentorship

Mentorship programs require time and effort — from the teammates responsible for organizing the programming to the mentor/mentee pairs. In honoring that time commitment by holding ourselves accountable, we show each other respect and consideration.

To put it another way: People are busy and it’s important to set them up for success!

Some ways to add accountability into a mentorship program are:

• Clear and ongoing communication: Share clear up-front criteria (as mentioned previously), with required acknowledgment of the program criteria by the employee when they sign up. And help teammates stay on track and celebrate their progress with regular check-ins and milestones. 
• Hype up the benefits: Mentees know what they’re getting out of their experience; make sure the mentors do too! Mentorship is a great way for senior employees to learn from people earlier in their careers who may be closer to business problems at the practitioner level.  

• Feedback collection: How are things going? This may uncover some challenges. Depending on feedback received, People/L&D team members can check in and debrief or see how they can unblock a pair to make them more successful.

Personalize the mentorship and coaching experience

No mentorship program is one-size-fits-all and L&D and People teams are well-positioned to create personalized programming that tailors mentorship offerings to particular teams and functions. LinkedIn’s 2024 Learning Report found that more than 77% of learners value receiving personalized course recommendations based on career goals and skill gaps.

• Identify where personalization is most impactful: When building program structure, People and L&D team members can identify where a higher-touch approach will be most effective. It’s a powerful step in planning. 
• Collect information during enrollment about participant goals: Set pairings up for mutual success with more thoughtful mentor/mentee matches. Creating the right flow of questions on your intake or interest form can help make this work more straightforward.
• Take action on feedback collected throughout the program lifecycle: This means a very important perspective (that of participants) will shape each future program cycle to more closely fit the unique needs of their team. It’s also a learning opportunity for program organizers!

Encourage repeat participants — and mentees who become mentors

One of the biggest indicators of a successful mentorship program is repeat participants.

As AppDirect’s Katie Fernandes shared with Donut in a recent webinar, “We’ve had a lot of people who have joined the program cycle after cycle, so I think that’s another great result for us.” Other program outcomes AppDirect has seen include a 90% boost to employee engagement and a 20% improvement in retention rates.

Some reasons repeat participation is so great:

• Participants have had a fulfilling experience: The program has offered something to previous mentors and mentees that they want to experience more of.
• More informed feedback: Participants are joining with the context of having experienced a previous round of programming, something that will add nuance and detail to future feedback they provide.
• Switching things up: Joining further program cycles can also provide participants with the opportunity to change roles, from mentor to mentee or the reverse!

The final word on mentorship programs

With these priorities in place, teams can feel confident they have built a healthy mentorship program with many great years ahead of it. Ideally, a great mentorship program in one area of the organization will also help People practitioners and leaders to expand their coaching, learning, and belonging goals in other directions.

Formal mentorship programs have been shown to have the greatest positive impact on participants and organizations alike, but there’s a lot of merit in encouraging informal mentorship to flourish within the organization as well. All forms of mentorship and sponsorship help clarify career goals, cultivate learning, and sustain strong networks.

Informal mentorship relationships can develop organically, as between managers and their reports, or can be a spontaneous offshoot of other, unrelated programs, like peer learning courses or groups like ERGs (Employee Resource Groups) that generate support for people who might be underrepresented in senior roles, like women, people of color, and people with disabilities.

Mentorship, both formal and informal, is a vital force for positive change and business growth. Continuing to prioritize it — making sure to periodically revisit and reflect on how things are going — will bring new insights and clues for future success.