Building a Culture of Mentorship: The Benefits and Best Practices of Company Mentoring Programs
Mentorship is an increasingly common practice in today’s workplace. According to a 2024 study by MentorclicQ: 98% of US Fortune 500 companies now have mentoring programs and 100% of the top 50 US Fortune 500 US Fortune companies have mentoring programs. Following the effects of the pandemic and the shift to more remote work, organizations are seeing a 30% increase in mentoring initiatives (LLH). The L&D Global Sentiment Survey shows that mentoring is now #4 on the list of learning and development strategies that HR teams are considering.
Why is this? The benefits of mentorship programs are clear:
High ROI for L&D programs for knowledge and skill building across a range of core competencies: technical skill, emotional intelligence, communication, negotiation, psychological safety, negotiation, etc.
Enhanced internal relationships and sense of belonging that support higher employee retention and workplace morale.
Confidence development with correlated lower levels of anxiety.
Streamlined career progression for both mentor and mentee.
A sense of meaning and giving-back that builds employee satisfaction.
Mentoring may also be associated with the bottom line. Companies with mentoring programs had profits that were 18% better than average, while those without mentoring programs had profits that were 45% worse than the average (Forbes).
So, what does that mean for you as HR and PeopleOps leaders? Now is the time to invest in a mentorship program if you don’t have one, and to consider the impact of the current program if you do.
Truly impactful mentorships programs can be tricky. They are not “one size fits all.” The key is settling on the mentorship strategy that makes the most sense for your teams and the organization’s culture. In this post, we detail the key considerations of various mentorship approaches for you to find the best fit for your teams. We also address universal best practices to help reap maximum benefit out of your internal mentorship program.
Image by Freepik
Type of Mentorship Relationships
Mentoring relationships can occur across a range of experience levels and career foci. Some programs are formal with a yearly cohort matched with specific mentors that engage in 1:1 coaching sessions monthly while returning to a full-group program on a routine basis. Others are more informal, encouraging mentors and mentees to self-select and engage in a meeting cadence and format that works best for them. Some programs are strictly internal to an organization while others encourage sharing of ideas and perspectives across companies, generations, and skill sets.
Here are few of the more common mentorship relationships to consider for your organizational needs:
Transitional Mentorship follows the format we are most familiar with where a more seasoned or skilled professional partners with a less developed professional to help build competency and offer resources or connections to meet individual goals. Generally, the focus of traditional mentorship is career progression or leadership development. However, mentors typically benefit from reverse mentoring as well, learning about current trends and innovations. One-on-one mentorships can become sustained relationships that grow and strengthen over time and can occur between two individuals within the organization or between an internal employee and external partner.
Peer-to-Peer Mentorship occurs between people that share similar skills or are at similar stages of career development. Peer-to-peer mentorship builds connection and community between colleagues or across companies when peers in the same industry face similar challenges. This form of mentorship proves especially valuable when the organization’s goal is to develop culture and enhance team effectiveness.
Group Mentorship pairs several mentees to a single mentor or group of mentors, offering a cost-effective approach to building teamwork and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing within an organization. This approach is useful when the company is short of mentors, looking to scale, or mentees are more comfortable learning in a group setting.
Onboarding Mentorship provides new employees with an internal company mentor who can help them learn the culture, values, goals, in-progress initiatives, and team dynamics of the organization. Onboarding mentorship can be a powerful tool to build an early sense of community and connection for new employees and streamline the learning curve. SHRM’s Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success report addresses how employees who participate in onboarding mentorship see more affinity for the organization, a deeper sense of belonging, and higher levels of job satisfaction.
Virtual Mentoring has become a more common and widely used approach as more organizations employ remote teams. This approach removes geographic barriers and provides opportunities for employees across cities, states, and even countries to connect without the expectations of meeting in person. For organizations looking to build culture across regions, this can be a critical approach, particularly for cross-functional teams operating globally. The use of virtual technology also meets many organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, providing equitable and inclusive access to training and programming.
Image by Pexels
Role of the Mentor vs. Coach
The role of a mentor can often be confused with that of a coach, however they serve two distinct purposes. Mentors focus on the development of an individual over a longer period of time, operating as a trusted advisor with greater seniority and expertise than the mentee. In the majority of mentorship relationships the mentee sets the agenda for the discussion to focus on areas of interest and challenge to their professional growth.
According to the International Coaching Federation (ICF), coaching is about “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” A coaching relationship can be either performance-driven or more focused on growth. Either way, the main difference between a coach and a mentor is a coach sits side-by-side with the coachee and provides the space for them to discover new perspectives and insights through open questions and reflections, whereas in a mentoring relationship, the mentee will ask more questions and seek advice and guidance from their mentor, tapping into their expertise.
When I was at Google, we had separate mentoring and coaching programs, where internal employees would mentor and/or coach other employees.
There was a Noogler Mentoring program for new hires to receive guidance as they onboarded into the company and culture. Joining a new company can feel like drinking from a firehose. These new hires ramped up more quickly because they could ask their mentor anything, and not feel self-conscious, because their mentor was seperate from their manager. These mentors provided advice and guidance.
There was also a different program for peer-to-peer coaching. These volunteer coaches would offer 1:1 coaching to Googlers across the company on various topics ranging from career development to navigating change and challenges. These coaches would hold space for the individual to explore their situation through different prespectives and uncover new ideas to move forward through active listening and asking open questions vs. giving advice.
As you design a mentorship program, take time to clarify the role and expectations of the mentor(s) and their relationship to the mentee(s). Do you want them to show up more as mentors – providing advice – or more as coaches – asking open questions?
Image by Freepik
Best Practices
The first and most critical aspect of any successful mentoring relationship is setting clear goals and expectations of the mentor(s) and the mentee(s). Avoid the fallacy of assumptions.
“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand, we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
Too often we operate on assumptions that, when uncorrected, can cause significant conflict and strife. Equip your participants to develop clarity and structure around the relationship. Before engaging in a program, have all involved consider:
What do I want the specific outcomes of this relationship to be?
What efforts/resources am I committed to providing to reach that outcome?
Are my goals appropriate for a mentoring relationship or would a different structure better serve my needs?
Your role as the HR or L&D Lead is to help facilitate interactions that best address the identified needs.
From Regroup’s work with tech companies big and small, other best practices include:
Find the right match. The right match considers the skillset the mentee desires to build and the expertise or connections of the mentor. For example, if a protegee is looking to build knowledge in a specific area, the mentor should be aware of this desire and have the correct expertise or relationships to help build those skills.
Establish a structure. Encourage pairs to outline and agree upon the terms of the engagement:
Mentorship duration – quarter, year, ongoing?
Meeting frequency – weekly, monthly, quarterly?
Format and length of the meetings – virtual, over lunch or coffee, in-office, via a run? 30 min, 1 hour?
For a program to be successful, both mentor and mentee must also be committed to putting in the time and energy for fruitful conversation and personal growth. Consider including a minimum time commitment requirement to encourage all participants are dedicated to the program. By establishing a clear structure up front, the pairs can focus on the content of their discussions without concern for the logistics of the relationship.
Define goals and expectations. Many mentees embark on mentorship programs with a specific goal or purpose, whether that is skill building, career development, networking, etc. Make sure the mentor and mentee are clear on these expectations and the desired results of the relationship. This conversation should include the topics to be covered and information desired to be learned.
As part of defining goals and expectations, encourage pairs to make explicit the ways they want to work together and how they intend to measure success. This should include:
How much and what are the mentor/mentee expected to prepare for each meeting?
What follow-up is expected from each participant between meetings
Schedule benchmarking moments to discuss what is working well and what could improve.
Outline a plan for course-correction if needed. Emotional labor frequently gets in the way of building effective relationships and maintaining a sense of psychological safety. Setting a plan for how to feel and respond in various situations can cull conflict and misperception down the line.
For example, if one member of the pair must reschedule, how should they best communicate that need in a way that respects the time and investment of the other?
If an interaction doesn’t go as planned or the conversation moves to a place of discomfort, how should the offended member best communicate their feelings and concerns to return the conversation to a better path?
If one member of the pair feels like they are putting more effort into the relationship, what is the best way for them to address the perception?
By establishing an agreed upon framework for conflict resolutions and conversation, the pair can be proactive in addressing concerns and maintaining vulnerability for a more successful and impactful relationship.
Educate your mentors. Strong mentors recognize that they do not have all the answers and that their role in the relationship is to support and guide, not to direct and mandate. Mentors are coaches who offer tools and resources to help mentees where they are at. Sometimes this means helping the mentor to realize the limitations of their knowledge and to connect mentees with resources or connections that can better meet their goals. Mentors should also be thoughtful about how they are showing up in the relationship and the behavior they are modeling to their protégé.
Image by Freepik
Compounding Benefit
Mentorship, when done correctly, can be a powerful tool in your L&D toolkit to build employee knowledge and skills, enhance culture and sense of community, and increase employee satisfaction. Additionally, mentorship can be a highly beneficial tool to employ in parallel with leadership or manager coaching, like that provided by Regroup. Mentoring relationships provide opportunities for employees to share what they’re thinking and learning, create accountability for practice, and push through challenges or questions that come up in practice.
As you create mentoring programs in your organization, the most critical factor is to clarify the purpose of the program and the target population. You may find that cultivating opportunities for several different mentoring relationships will offer the best value to your efforts in L&D and to the organization’s mission and goals.
Feeling lost or curious to learn more? We’re here for you, click here to schedule a call.
