Develop a successful mentoring program the easy way
Managing a mentoring program is a lot of work
The ‘free alternative’ to investing in a mentoring software is to using an Excel spreadsheet to manage and track your mentoring program.
Once you have over about 70 partipciants it becomes very hard to oversee and grow – there are a lot of resumes and CV’s to read through, manual matching and communication as well as tracking progress and taking participants and giving them tasks and tools to help the mentee get the most of the time with their mentor. Soon, using a low cost but high impact mentoring software becomes an easy no-brainer!
By investing in a mentoring software you save time and effort by putting a framework around your mentoring efforts at a low cost, and importantly track activity and meaningful outcomes.
Save Time - Automate to minimize paperwork
Hand-matching and reviewing hundreds of resumes to match mentors and mentees is a daunting task. With so much work it is difficult to create the best possible matches for everyone. It also takes a lot of time and energy away from the most important work of communicating with the participants, working out problems and developing sponsor relationships.
Our mentoring software will save you time by automating the matching process. Mentors and mentees will be able to match themselves by selecting from a short list of the best possible matches based on their application. There are various options for matching and our algorithm can be adjusted for your needs.
Reduce Risk - Using Excel can be a problem
Most mentoring programs have an online application form that is later processed into an Excel file. But using Excel can present unexpected risks. For example, if program managers need to collaborate and accidentally send the Excel file via email it can be a security risk and possible breach of confidential information, especially if it has student, membership or employess ID numbers and other private data.
Using mentoring software reduces the need for Excel and has multiple levels of web security to prevent potential problems.
Identify & Resolve Problems Fast - Through automated surveys and analysis
If a mentoring relationship is not going well it’s usually impossible for the manager to know about it until it’s too late. This can create a potential problem for the program and the company or organization.
To prevent these issues our software can send out simple satisfaction surveys on a regular basis and compare each participant’s answers over time. If someone rates their relationship high at the beginning and then lower and lower over time it will alert the manager to look into it and talk to them about it. That way the manager can prevent problems before they start and easily keep track on the satisfaction levels of all participants. Doing this manually without the software is a lot of work.
Simplified Management Reporting Tools
As a mentor program administrator, it’s vital that you’re able to provide timely and relevant information to your management team regarding key metrics and statistics. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help to ascertain how effective each program is progressing; this helps assess the overall return on investment (ROI) and to improve future programs.
MentorEase provides simple downloadable reports of all the data that you can use to review progress and results.
We follow the Kirkpatrick Model which is the industry standard for measuring talent investments in industrial relations. For mentoring programs, the model measures results in 4 stages:
Level 1: Reaction – Level of Participation
* Number of mentors
* Number of mentees
* Number of matches
* Number of mentors who accepted multiple mentees
* Number of requests accepted, declined, pending, time to react
Level 2: Learning – Level of Engagement
* Number of conversations started
* Number of meeting requests
* Meeting summaries (+ Next steps)
* Mentoring Checklist
* Journal notes
* Define goals and tasks
* Mentor feedback on goals and tasks
Level 3: Behavior – Level of Completion
* Mentoring Checklist completion
* Goal and task completion
Level 4: Results – Level of Outcomes (short & long term)
* Halfway surveys
* Completion surveys
* Post mentoring surveys (1, 2, 3 years later)
* Interest in the mentoring program:
* Google Analytics traffic reports
* Referrals and volume of applications over time
* Returning mentors over time
Aside from these there are also:
Usage Logs
* Review all activity on the platform
* Filter to find specific items
Analyze the data
* Export filtered data to Excel
* Charts and graphs (using third-party tools)
* Identification of repeat mentors & other key stats
