How One Global Tech Company Improves Engagement Across Brands with Mentorship

Overview

One relationship-focused tech company has been at the forefront of connecting people for friendship, romance and networks since its inception. Established in the mid-1990s, the organization expanded its influence by acquiring widely used apps and services dedicated to building human relationships, digitally and in-person. Today, nearly 30 years later, the company has built a global customer base with over 15 million paying subscribers across its various brands, and a workforce of more than 2,000 employees across 20 offices worldwide.

The Challenge

Having a global footprint and a portfolio of brands meant that different teams were spread across various locations, each with its own unique culture and practices. This structure created a siloed operation without a framework for the brands to communicate with each other.

“I’m not sure departments were even speaking with each other that often,” said lead program admin and Senior Talent Management and Learning Specialist. “This meant brands weren’t sharing knowledge and experience that could be valuable to their own projects and the company’s processes at large.”

Silos Block Innovation and Efficiency

For example, if one brand had already rolled out a feature that another brand was about to launch, those in the latter were often unaware that another team had gone through the same experience. This kept best practices and lessons learned isolated, instead of making feature and function rollouts easier and more successful.

Employee Growth Lacks Transparency

The lack of exposure employees had across other brands also impacted their engagement, professional development and retention. Employees weren’t aware of career and learning opportunities outside the brand they currently worked for. As a result, employees were not as engaged or connected as they could have been, nor were they actively looking for ways to grow their careers within the company.

The organization wanted to change this by improving communication and transparency across regions and brands, while facilitating meaningful connections and relationships among employees. This would expose them to more opportunities across the company and encourage them to stay and grow their careers within the organization.

Objective

Due to the time and resources it often took to launch and scale mentorship programs across various brands worldwide, the company chose to invest in a mentoring platform that could reduce the time needed to run programs, while increasing the visibility into impact and outcomes. To improve employee retention, collaboration and engagement, the company partnered with Chronus to launch a mentoring program in 2021. The program aims to strengthen internal networks and expand employee exposure across company brands, focusing on high match rates and participant satisfaction within the mentoring experience.

I felt it opened up very thoughtful discussions with teammates I would never really get to connect with.
– Mentor

Participation is voluntary and open to all employees. The organization engaged senior leaders and executives early on, inviting them to be advocates and share openly how mentoring has positively impacted their careers. These experiences were shared through company-wide blog posts and during All-Hands events. These were powerful tools managers could reference when encouraging their employees to register for the program.

The Solution

The Chronus mentoring platform is a key factor in centralizing the company’s global program, automating successful matches and providing a clean, intuitive system for its employees to use.

Centralized System Reduces Admin Efforts

Given the size of the company and the open-to-all mentoring program, the organization needs a centralized system to run the mentoring program, reduce resource consumption and better facilitate communication. The Chronus platform provides the opportunity to scale program communications between admins and participants, as well as mentors and mentees, without relying on individual efforts. Having a centralized dashboard also allows program administrators to monitor the health and performance of mentoring connections as participants enroll in and engage with the program. This dashboard also allowed admins to see performance across programs, while parsing the data down to individual brands or locations.

Customized Matching Improves Relationship Quality

Chronus’ AI-powered matching technology enables the organization to pair mentors and mentees across different brands, tenures and locations. Making quality matches across a large organization can be strenuous, but with the help of Chronus’ technology and algorithms, the company matches employees more efficiently, in less time.

Clean Look and Intuitive Interface Improves Participant Engagement

The look, feel and usability of the platform makes it easy for participants to engage with their mentoring partners and program admins. Mentors and mentees easily understand what actions to take and which tasks to complete to keep mentoring connections productive. A simple, straightforward platform is crucial to keeping participants engaged and committed to their mentoring journeys.

The Impact

Since partnering with Chronus, the company has seen the following impact at an organizational level:

• Retention rates: 71% for mentoring participants vs. 59% for non-participants
• Advancement: Mentoring participants have 19% higher advancement rates compared to non-participants
• Language Connection: 45% of connections have participants from different language fluency groups
• Cross-Brand Connections: 95% of all engagements have participants across different company brands.

I was really blown away by my mentee’s success and progress — and frankly, surprised by my impact! She went from a poor mid-year review to a super positive year-end review. We worked on a new plan, new mindset and a new way of communicating. This stuff is really helpful for the mentee but also so great for the mentor!
– Mentor

Additionally, the organization has seen strong satisfaction trends from participants. Mentees value the opportunity to connect with senior leaders, while mentors appreciate the chance to achieve goals and build relationships with teammates they don’t normally interact with.

• 88% of mentees achieved all or some of their goals for the mentorship
• 94% of mentees find the relationship with their mentoring partner useful
• 94% participant satisfaction rate

Moving forward, the company hopes to sustain a healthy level of participation and engagement in the mentorship program. The organization aims to introduce specialized tracks so employees can experience an even more tailored programming that is relevant to their needs, upskilling and professional growth within the company.

Setting goals initially was very useful, and having someone keeping me accountable has been so valuable. In addition, it’s been so helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of and hear a different perspective.
– Mentee

Ultimately, the organization believes the mentorship program is facilitating relationship-building across brands, fostering engagement, improving talent mobility and cultivating meaningful relationships that contribute to both employee and organizational growth.

Why Global Organizations Choose Chronus

Leading enterprises turn to Chronus for its powerful, scalable platform to address key workplace challenges like disengagement, turnover and disconnected teams, especially in remote and hybrid environments. Chronus mentoring software enables organizations to leverage mentoring and employee resource groups (ERGs) to create meaningful connections, enhance engagement and promote continuous learning.

With its simplicity, strong security protocols and proven scalability, Chronus helps companies efficiently manage and grow programs that drive retention, productivity and collaboration. Trusted by brands like Amazon, LVMH, ExxonMobil and Paychex, Chronus breaks down silos and builds a culture of development and connection, ensuring employees are engaged and supported. For organizations looking to nurture talent and stay competitive, Chronus is the solution.