Learning and development carries a heavy price tag for organisations all over the world. In fact, worldwide spend on corporate training has ballooned to over $150 billion dollars.
With most companies spending an average of $1200 per employee per year, and tech companies spending upwards of $1,800+, we wanted to explore how mentoring – including mentoring software – fits into this hefty budget.
The cost of mentoring
For today’s purposes, we are going to be assessing mentoring on an organisational level – which means programs big enough (50+) to warrant an investment in mentoring software.
Now, not all mentoring software is created equal – and nor are their pricing structures. So for today’s purposes, let’s look at the cost of Mentorloop’s software (that’s us).
If you want to offer mentoring to 50 of your employees, members or students, you are going to shell out $625 per month. That’s $625 for 25 mentors and 25 mentees.
In other words, providing mentoring to 50 of your people will cost a grand total of $13 per month per employee.
And the numbers improve as you scale the size of your mentoring program.
51-250 people = $1,125 per month | That’s as low as $5 per employee per month
251-500 people = $1,875 per month | That’s as low as $4 per employee per month
501-1500 people = $2,775 per month | That’s a pathetic $2 per employee per month
Now, as I’m sure you can tell – that’s ludicrously cheap.
Let’s take a standard program of 51-250 people. Think about what costs $5, and then think about the impact that that investment could have on both mentors and mentees.
On top of that, the software itself saves the program coordinator/s an uncomfortable amount of admin and additional work – swapping the spreadsheets and emails for one platform which does the manual work for you.
An investment in mentoring software enables you to scale mentoring according to economies of scale in the same way that you wouldn’t have a stand-and-deliver instructor course for one person.
How does mentoring measure up?
Well, some simple math helps us get there pretty quickly. At $5 per month ($60 per year), mentoring will take up a lowly 5% of your per employee learning and development budget.
That’s $60 per employee per year to give your employees access to:
- Increased confidence
- Improved leadership development
- Skill development
- Career direction
And $13,500 per year to give your company:
- Improved retention
- Increased engagement
- Increased knowledge share
- Improved culture
- Improved diversity and inclusion
With 46% of corporate training hours being delivered by the old school stand-and-deliver instructor in a classroom setting (that’s ~$550 per year of classroom learning), you can see how quickly mentoring starts to look like a really good investment.
Countless studies have showcased the effectiveness of mentoring. One such study found managerial productivity increased by 88% when mentoring was involved, versus only 24% with training alone.
As supported by the below table, where mentoring is ranked as the most effective form of training.
As you have probably gathered, mentoring is a very accessible investment, especially when you incorporate the functionality of mentoring software – and especially when you break the numbers down.
In fact, it’s a no brainer.
Rather than thinking, ‘what is the cost of mentoring software’, you might want to ask ‘what is the cost of not offering mentoring to our people’.
It’s bound to be more expensive.
We are transparent about our pricing, which you can find in full detail here, because we know our mentoring software is great value for money.
Check it out for yourself. See the impact that spending a few thousand dollars can have on your people and organisation.
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