You’re running a mentorship program. How do you know if it’s working?

1 Define your goals

Before you launch or run a mentorship program, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with it. What are the specific outcomes or benefits that you expect from the program? How do they align with your organizational or team goals? Some possible goals for a mentorship program include increasing employee engagement and retention, enhancing skills and competencies, boosting productivity and performance, fostering innovation and creativity, and promoting diversity and inclusion. To track and assess the progress and results of your mentorship program, it is essential to translate your goals into measurable indicators or metrics. For instance, if your goal is to increase employee engagement, you might use metrics such as employee satisfaction surveys, turnover rates, participation rates, and feedback forms.

2 Choose your methods

When collecting and analyzing data for your mentorship program evaluation, you can use a variety of methods, such as surveys, interviews, observations, and reports. Surveys are questionnaires sent to mentors, mentees, and other stakeholders to gather feedback and ratings on various aspects of the program. Interviews are one-on-one conversations to gain deeper insights into motivations, expectations, experiences, outcomes, and suggestions. Observations involve shadowing, monitoring, reviewing, and testing behavior and performance of mentors and mentees during or after the program. Reports document data, findings, and recommendations from the evaluation in the form of dashboards, charts, graphs, and narratives. To get a comprehensive and balanced view of your mentorship program, you can use a combination of these methods as well as different sources of data (quantitative and qualitative).

3 Plan your timeline

Evaluating your mentorship program requires you to plan a timeline for collecting and analyzing data, communicating findings, and using results to improve the program. Baseline data should be collected before or at the start of the program to establish the current situation and the baseline for comparison. Midpoint data should be collected during the program to monitor progress and identify any issues or opportunities. Endpoint data should be collected at the end of the program to measure outcomes and impact. Follow-up data should be collected after a certain period of time to assess sustainability and long-term effects. Analysis involves organizing, interpreting, and synthesizing data from different methods and sources. Reporting involves presenting, communicating, and sharing findings and recommendations from analysis. Finally, action plans, feedback loops, or best practices should be used to implement improvements based on findings and recommendations.

4 Involve your stakeholders

Evaluating your mentorship program is not something you can do alone. Involving stakeholders, such as mentors, mentees, managers, leaders, and customers, is essential to the process. Engage them by asking about their expectations and preferences for the evaluation. Explain the purpose, goals, and methods of the evaluation and invite them to participate in data collection and analysis. Empower them by providing the tools and resources they need to conduct the evaluation. Recognize their contributions and reward their efforts. Educate them on the benefits, challenges, and best practices of evaluation. Share the findings, recommendations, and actions from the evaluation. Help them learn from the evaluation and apply those lessons to their work.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?