Mentoring programs – what is their effectiveness and how to measure it?

There is a lot of talk about how effective mentoring is – both in terms of developing talent – Mentees and Mentors, as well as in terms of building relationships, improving engagement and collaboration. 

However, such conclusions are drawn from large-scale studies, sometimes difficult to replicate in the case of mentoring carried out in a limited group. 

At the same time, knowing whether mentoring in a company is effective or not is of paramount importance for ongoing mentoring programs and their participants. Knowledge of the effects of the program contributes, among other things, to better support of its participants by the organizer, assessment of the benefits of the time spent, and is also an invaluable support when making decisions about extending or expanding the mentoring program in the future.

So how can we on our own evaluate the effects of mentoring in the company?  

With help comes the Mentiway application, which has several built-in mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of mentoring programs implemented with it. Access to them is granted to any application user with administrative access.  

Meetings and their frequency 

At the most basic stage, the measure of the effectiveness of mentoring can be the commitment to the program itself. The mechanics of the Mentiway application are based on mentoring sessions. It is around the sessions that Mentees and Mentors implement the basic tenets of mentoring. Therefore, at this lowest level, the effects of the program will be manifested by the planning and execution of the individual mentoring sessions themselves.  

The app automatically monitors frequency of sessions, number of scheduled and completed meetings With this data, this basic level of engagement can be reviewed on an ongoing basis and lessons can be learned or responded to in case of potential problems. 

Assessment of current satisfaction with sessions 

The next level is to monitor no longer the engagement itself, but the ongoing level of satisfaction with the mentoring.  

As part of Mentiway, participants are encouraged to rate their level of satisfaction at the end of each session. These ratings are available to program administrators both at the aggregate level – to determine overall satisfaction levels – and at the level of each couple – to be able to respond in real time when satisfaction levels are low.  

The data provide a kind of barometer of program sentiment. 

Mid- and end-of-process surveys 

For mentoring to be effective for the Mentee, it is necessary to define development goals for the process. The Mentee, with the support of the Mentor, defines the goals at the beginning of the process – at the level of the contract or Mentee Development Plan. At a later stage, mentoring sessions should revolve around these goals, with the goal of eventually bringing them to fruition.

In Mentiway, participants are given surveys to fill out to assess their progress toward their goals – first midway through the process, then at the end. With these forms, participants have the opportunity to evaluate their mentoring process and make any modifications during. But also the organizer – at the aggregate level – gets access to the results of these surveys. So he can still check during the program whether the processes are on the right track, and at the end – summarize the declarative effects of the entire program in terms of, for example, degree of goal achievement 

Satisfaction score or Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

At the end or after the mentoring program, it’s still worth interviewing participants or asking them to fill out a survey collecting, among other things, a question about their satisfaction rating with the program or an NPS-type question – examining how much a participant would recommend this type of mentoring program to his or her colleagues. 

The average satisfaction score or NPS is an excellent tool to see if the participants themselves are satisfied with the program, which can be a signal to, among other things, extend the mentoring program or organize its next edition. 

It is also worthwhile to analyze ratings by Mentors and Mentees and by position in the organization. Potential differences between indicators for each group can help you draw interesting conclusions. 

Long-term evaluation 

The aforementioned parameters refer to the direct effects of the program – whether the participants engage sufficiently, whether they are satisfied and whether they recommend participation in the program further. This type of evaluation, of course, answers a lot of questions and allows to evaluate mentoring in the short term, possibly modify its assumptions and decide on a repeat edition. 

In larger organizations, however, one may still be tempted to analyze the more long-term effects of participation in a mentoring program. For example, one can check whether people participating in the program are promoted more often than others, what their periodic evaluations are, and what their turnover is compared to the company as a whole. However, here we are already getting into very specific considerations, depending on the organization in question, and it would probably be difficult to point to specific metrics for evaluation. Everyone should relate them to their own team.