We always get asked about how to keep engagement up in a mentoring program. It’s always a top priority for program coordinators which makes sense because a healthy amount of engagement is what keeps a program alive and productive. This might seem like a lot of work, but in reality, there are easy ways to increase engagement.
Here are 5 simple ways you can wake up your program and increase your mentoring program engagement.
1. Webinars
Schedule a 20-40 minute webinar with your participants to talk about topics like active listening, mentoring best practices, or Diversity & Inclusion issues. This is a great way to encourage your participants along on their mentoring journey or give them topics to discuss with their mentoring partners.
Open it up to questions and give participants a chance to engage with others in the program. It can help foster a feeling of community and encourage continued engagement.
2. Share Success Stories
We all love success stories, especially when we can relate to them!
Do you have a mentoring pair in your cohort from whom you’ve had particularly great feedback? Or participants from a previous cohort who have achieved cool things since as a direct result of the mentoring they’ve engaged in?
Ask these mentoring champions to share their stories with your participants! Keeping them inspired and showing them what they can get out of the experience is a great way to keep engagement up.
3. Check-in With Your Participants
Sometimes, people just need a bit of a nudge. We’re all busy and sometimes new commitments or activities can get pushed to the side when we’re not used to making time for them.
Reaching out with a quick “How’s it going?” message can be just the reminder some participants need to get a move on.
Pro Tip: If you’re using Mentorloop, use your filters to find participants who haven’t sent match requests yet, or maybe haven’t had the first meeting with their mentoring partner yet. Send a bulk message to these participants asking if they’re having any trouble and if you can help in any way.
4. Share Resources
Participants will feel more confident embarking on this journey if they feel really well-prepared.
Kickstart the program by sharing some resources that will help your mentors and mentees navigate the beginning of their mentoring relationships or help them be the best mentoring partner they can be. Share podcasts or blogs that can give your cohort some inspiration or useful tips. Do you have any in-house resources that you think might be useful for them? Remind your participants that they’re available!
Pro Tip: If you’re using Mentorloop, use your Recommended Reading to do this. You can assign different content depending on a participant’s role so they can get content that’s relevant to their role as a mentor, mentee, or both!
5. Let Them Know They Can Reach Out
Lastly, make sure that your participants know that they can contact you if they have any questions or having any sort of trouble. Some participants might just need a bit of help to get going – and if they don’t know how to access support, it seems easier to just drop the whole thing.
Make sure they know that they can contact you and how they can do that. It can be as simple as a short check-in email every month or making support and contact information available and easy to find.
Keeping your program’s engagement healthy isn’t as difficult as you might think. As long as you keep an eye on how engaged your participants are, we hope these easy ways to increase engagement in your mentoring program can help you keep your program buzzing with productivity and growth.
Keen to learn more on how to increase engagement in your mentoring program? Head to Mentorloop Academy where we have more detailed how-tos and some expert insight from our team of mentoring specialists!
We’ve also got a free guide on mentoring program marketing and recruitment that gives you lots of tips on how to kickstart your program’s engagement too! It’s available for download here:
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