Workplace mentorship programs can be an effective tool for employee development, connectivity and overall organizational success. Mentorshipâin which one employee acts as a trusted career advisor to another employeeâhas been proven to contribute to higher employee satisfaction, engagement, productivity and retention, among other benefits.
However, not all mentoring experiences are equal, and there are plenty of roadblocks that organizations face in creating a workplace mentoring program. Recognizing these common mentoring challenges and solutions can help you build a mentorship program that will be a real asset to your organization. This article explores some of the major reasons mentoring programs fail and offers tips on how to navigate the mentoring process.
1. Lack of Mentoring Program Purpose
Without a clear purpose a mentorship program is destined to fail. In order for a program to be effective, everyone involved needs to understand the program’s objectives. Without agreed upon goals, mentoring programs can become ânice to haveâ activities that donât lead to real outcomes for the organization and its people. It can lead to:
- wandering conversations
- unclear expectations for participants
- fizzling mentoring relationships post-match
Starting a mentoring program because it sounds nice or a few people mentioned it on the employee engagement survey isnât enough to make it impactful. Seek to better understand the reasoning behind the need.
Set Clear Mentorship Goals or Objectives
Planning a program needs to start with the âwhy.â What does the organization want to get out of the program? This could include results such as increasing engagement or retention, improving succession planning, or supporting inclusion and belonging goals. Whether itâs employees who want more professional development opportunities or workers who feel disconnected from their colleagues and company, understand why itâs worth building this development program
These business objectives should align with the overall strategic goals of the organization. Without these clear guardrails, it can be a challenge for both program administrators and participants to stay on track. Setting goals will also help to guide program owners to determine the right metrics to know if the program is successful. This is keep to retaining interest, buy-in and budget for your program.
The Chronus platform and team help clients to establish the right goals and objectives during the design phase of a mentoring program, helping admins to build a robust mentoring strategy around what they want to achieve and how to get there. The Chronus platform then helps admins stay on top of those goals with customized mentoring reports that track their key metrics in real-time.
2. Lack of Mentoring Program Design & Structure
Planning is crucial for a successful mentorship program. Organizations need to think through every aspect of the program, from its overall purpose down to details of how it will be implemented and even evaluated. Program managers should be clear on their roles and responsibilities, and participants should be given all the information they need to be fully prepared to make the most of their mentoring relationships.
Establish Roles, Timelines and Expectations
For a mentoring program to run smoothly, both program owners and participants have to understand what is expected of them. Itâs important to set up clear roles for everyone involved.
Program owners need to be aligned on:
- Mentoring format (1-1 mentoring, flash mentoring, mentoring circles, reverse mentoring)
- How long the program will last (3 months, 6 months, 1 year)
- Target audience (All employees, new managers, new hires)
- Matching style (admin match, self match, bulk match or hybrid match)
- Qualifications for mentors, if any (tenure, job level)
- How often partners are expected to meet
- Metrics of success being measured and how often
For participants, be clear in defining:
- What and who youâre looking for in when it comes to mentors
- Skill sets or knowledge the program is hoping to provide participants
- Program timeline
- Time commitment expectations / how often participants will be expected to meet
- The role of a mentor versus a mentee in a mentor relationship
At Chronus, Customer Experience Partners work with clients to help establish these things during the implementation phase, building concrete details around the strategy and the execution. The platform also offers email templates and communication guides on how to properly promote the program to intended audiences.
3. Bad Mentor-Mentee Pairings
Effective mentorship hinges on successful relationships, so it’s important to get mentor-mentee pairings right. A bad mentor match can actually be worse for a mentee than no mentor at all. Mismatches can single-handedly turn a potentially positive experience into a negative one, leading to disengagement and lost opportunities for both the mentor and mentee.
Just because someone is a tenured employee doesn’t mean they’ll make a great mentor, or that they’ll want to be a mentor at all. Putting importance on the wrong criteria could lead you to poor matches. This can become more complicated when pairing mentors manually. Trying to precisely and effectively match every pair can be time consuming and exhausting. Mistakes or mismatches are bound to happen.
Customize Matching Algorithm for More Successful Pairings
Matching methods should be deliberately designed to offer opportunities for pairings with maximum potential. Be intentional about the mentoring pool being created in your company. Aligning your matching criteria (factors such as goals, work styles, personalities, locations and experience) with the goals of the program and the wants and needs of your participants will help you better match people together. For example, if youâre hoping to upskill newer employees in a subject matter, make sure your intended mentors have this experience and expertise. Then layer on other factors like those mentioned aboveâlocation, interests, function, etc.
Build Inclusivity in Pairing
Organic or informal mentoring has often meant mentors tended to choose mentees who looked like them. Historically, this left employee populations such as women or people of color out of mentoring relationships. A modern, formal mentoring program should ensure inclusivity is built into the matching process so people of diverse perspectives, backgrounds, experiences and locations are presented with the opportunity to learn from each other.
Using an AI-powered matching algorithm can provide you an easier and quicker way to match people successfully across large numbers. The Chronus mentoring platform makes it easy to customize your matching criteria and algorithm based on whatâs important to your program. What once took hours or days, suddenly takes admins seconds, freeing them up to focus more time on other parts of the program or pressing job responsibilities.
4. Low Program Enrollment
Just because you build it does not mean participants will come. Even the best-intentioned mentoring programs can fail if no one participates. Watch out for the following triggers in the mentoring process:
- Ineffective program marketing or communication
- Little to no reason, recognition or incentive for participating
You might have heard the adage, if you want someone to remember something, you have to tell them, tell them what you told them and then tell them about what you told them you told them. The same is true for mentoring programs. People need to hear about the program several times, in different ways. Additionally, mentorship offers plenty of intrinsic rewards, but sometimes people forget why itâs such an important type of connection and professional development.
Continuously Promote Your Mentoring Program
Program owners need to promote the mentoring program in waves. Itâs never a one and done. Make sure to get the word out:
- in company email communications
- at all-hands meetings
- on the organizationâs Intranet
- through internal communication platforms like Slack, etc
- through social media channels
Whether itâs through text, video, infographics, images or a combination of it all, your organization should hear about the program in a variety of formats and multiple times in order to understand the importance. Once you think youâre done, do it one more time. Check out our Promotional Toolkit to get started.
Keep in mind what other things are going on in your organization. Pair up with initiatives that support your program (employee engagement survey release, company on-sites) and avoid timing with things that might distract people from participating (healthcare enrollment or end of year deadlines).
Donât Forget the WIIFM
Remember, we as humans are often looking out for what is best for us personally. The program announcement needs to be framed in clear reasons and benefits for why people should join. Make sure mentors and mentees know what they are getting out of it.
Mentors can gainâŚ
- leadership skills
- the feeling of paying it forward
- new knowledge or understanding
Mentees can âŚ
- increase their network
- learn skills and knowledge for future personal and professional growth
- better understand org structure and workings
- gain emotional and professional support in the company
These things should be key messages in the promotional efforts for the program. It will help keep the programâs goals and benefits top of mind for mentors and mentees.
5. Participant Disengagement
Program disengagement is not uncommon. Mentoring relationships can lose steam, especially when not properly prepared or guided through the connection. Whether itâs being unsure of how to proceed or how to establish and meet goals, this lack of clarity can make mentors and mentees pull back from the connection or potentially disengage from the program altogether.
Train Mentors and Mentees
While some people can be ânaturalsâ at mentoring, everyone can benefit from training and support to help them thrive. Some skills that mentors and mentees can learn include:
- How to build a mentoring session agenda
- How to listen more effectively
- How to offer constructive feedback
- How to resolve conflicts
- How to set goals, tasks and milestones
- How to hold a mentoring partner accountable
- How to check-in with a partner on your mentoring relationship status
Training participants at the beginning of a mentoring program helps to keep them focused on the tasks at hand and clear on the journey ahead. Program admins should take participants through a training session prior to the start of the program to make sure mentors and mentees understand the expectations, as well as what to do if the relationship should get off course.
The Chronus platform provides training for mentors and mentees in the form of
- self-paced learnings
- live sessions
- courses
- interactive quizzes
Guide the Mentoring Conversation
Without offering valuable guidance, conversations can become too casual or meander without addressing key development areas, leading to disengagement and missed opportunities. Additionally, research shows many corporate mentoring programs fail when they lack a formalized path for mentor-mentee interactions. Guided conversations create consistency, making the mentoring experience more productive, impactful, and aligned with both individual and organizational goals.
In addition, the Chronus platform provides Guided Conversations, in-platform structure meetings with automated prompts that invite active discussions and lead to actionable outcomes in mentoring relationships. This combined with Chronusâ automatic nudges, reminders and notifications help mentoring participants if they get off track or lag behind.
6. Unknown Mentoring Outcomes
What doesnât get measured, doesnât get done. Failing to measure a mentoring program leaves organizations blind to its effectiveness, leading to wasted time, resources, and missed opportunities. Without tracking progress, itâs impossible to know if mentoring relationships are thriving or faltering, potentially allowing negative experiences to go uncheckedâsomething research has shown can be more damaging than no mentoring at all.
Build Robust Program Reporting & Evaluation
Along with defining your program objectives, it’s critical to decide how success will be measured. KPIs should be defined and measurement parameters built into the program plan from the beginning. Otherwise, it’s extremely difficult to evaluate progress and make necessary changes to improve the program over time.
Chronus provides robust mentoring reporting and evaluation tools for mentoring programs by leveraging data analytics to track key metrics such as participation rates, engagement levels, and program outcomes. The platform offers built-in dashboards that provide real-time insights into mentoring progress, helping administrators measure impact and identify areas for improvement.
7. Little to No Leadership Buy-In or Support
A mentoring program without leadership support is unlikely to succeed. Leaders need to be on board with the idea of mentorship as a way to bring the workforce together before any mentoring program can get off the ground.
Identify Program Champions Before the Program Starts
You should gain leadership buy-in before launching a mentoring program by clearly communicating the program’s benefits, showing how it aligns with organizational goals, and resolving any hesitations. You’ll need to keep leadership engaged and aware of the program’s success and impact every step of the way. Find those in your upper leadership levels who have had great mentors in their journeys. These people can become champions in speaking to the power and impact of mentorship in a personâs life. Getting leadership to talk about the program, or even better participate in it, are great steps to ensuring buy-in and continued support for the program.
Storytelling is Key
All the great work of mentoring won’t mean a thing if you’re not showcasing the success. This means a clear story about benefits and how they tie into the organization’s business needs, as well as compelling examples of success. Ways to showcase your mentoring narrative include:
- Having successful mentor/mentee pairs share their experiences (think written word, audio or video)
- Inviting participants to a virtual/in-person networking session to share tips and best practices
Mentoring Software Helps Workplace Mentorship Programs Succeed
Simply creating a mentoring program is not enoughâit takes careful thought, planning, oversight and follow-up to overcome common mentoring challenges and reap the full benefits. Programs that lack purpose and structure, effective participant matching and preparation, leadership support or strong engagement and participation are more likely to fail.
Avoiding these pitfalls and creating a strong, effective program can be a complicated, time-consuming venture. Chronus mentoring services can help, with built-in services that include:
- Customized mentoring formats and programs that meet your unique goals
- Self-paced training for mentors and mentees
- Program performance reporting on match rates, satisfaction, retention and more
- Personalized strategic consultation on how to build/run an effective mentoring program
The automation and ease that Chronus offers allows you to focus on creating and nurturing a mentorship culture that meets the unique needs of your organization while maximizing potential positive benefits.
Find out how you can avoid common mistakes to build a successful mentorship program with Chronus mentoring software.
