Mentoring software isn’t necessarily new. But it has become increasingly important as mentoring programs become larger, more sophisticated, and more important to the functioning of a business.
Starting a mentoring program can be overwhelming, with so many moving parts and so little time. So how does mentoring software help you start a mentoring program?
‘Recruiting’ mentors and mentees into the program
Getting mentors and mentees into your program can be tricky; how do you gather the matching/profile data of your employee, students or members? What are some good survey questions to ask in order to create great matches?
These questions and logistical problems are easily solved with mentoring software. Mentoring software enables you to send out one simple ‘recruitment form’. This recruitment form is customisable to your organisations needs i.e you get to decide what questions you want to ask your participants, and is easily completed and submitted by mentors and mentees for approval by the coordinator.
Once submitted by program participants, this form data and full profile lives inside of the mentoring software platform – and is instantly accessible for matching.
What used to take hours jumping between surveys, emails, and spreadsheets – is fully integrated in one solution and takes a matter of minutes. The process is also less frictional for the mentors and mentees, and results in more signups and a better user experience.
Matching mentors and mentees
Mentoring software takes care of the all-important mentor-mentee matching. Matching mentees and mentors is often one of the most important aspects of a mentoring program, and yet it often becomes extremely unscientific and messy through spreadsheets and email. Mentorloop enables you to easily match mentors and mentees according to their experience, preferences, and their program goals.
It also takes the vast majority of the admin burden away from the coordinator, and makes the process clean, simple, and less manual.
You can read about all of Mentorloop’s features here.
Providing resources and support to program participants
Mentoring is much more action-oriented than a once-a-month chat. But most people don’t know what mentoring should involve, and they don’t know what a great mentorship looks like. That’s why both mentors and mentees require ongoing support, advice, and useful tools and resources to get the most out of a mentoring program.
Mentorloop provides mentoring participants with resources and content about how to be an effective mentor or mentee, while also empowering them to develop through the provision of goal-setting frameworks and spreadsheets. A good mentoring program will coach mentors and mentees through the mentoring process; not leave them to figure it out.
Building a framework for the program
One of the hardest things about implementing a company program is building the framework and expectations through which people will participate. A good mentoring software platform like Mentorloop does that all for you.
Mentorloop provides program coordinators with Mentoring agreements and first-meeting checklists which they can disseminate to program participants. These resources enable participants to understand the expectations around the program and provide a framework for moving forward and staying engaged.
Tracking and reporting on program outcomes
While mentoring is a believed-in HR program and proven L&D strategy, it is still necessary to report on and prove program outcomes. Mentorloop enables program coordinators to see and chart individual and mentoring relationship progress. This way, the coordinator can ensure that people are engaged and getting the most out of mentoring; resulting in better engagement, better outcomes, and higher ROI.
A mentoring software platform also enables individuals to track their progress, giving them a history of their tasks, events, goals, and chats – always accessible, all in one place.
It’s software – the possibilities are endless
In addition to all of the core features of mentoring software, which replace the largely manual methods of yesteryear, it offers solutions that aren’t possible without technology. For example, one of Mentorloop’s most popular features is My Match, a feature that allows mentors and mentees to browse, select, and connect with the mentors and/or mentees of their choice.
Just like their favourite social media channels including Facebook and LinkedIn.
Building a culture of mentoring
Good mentoring software will embed a culture of mentoring in your organisation. The flexibility and scalability of mentoring software will allow the program coordinator to quickly expand the mentoring program, and add and remove program participants with ease.
Because of the admin burden and manual effort required in a traditional mentoring program, HR leaders often choose to run mentoring programs exclusively for diversity purposes, or high or low achievers – but mentoring should and can be accessible to all people within an organisation via mentoring software.
A purpose-built mentoring solution also shows your employees that you are serious about mentoring, and serious about their development. Mentoring isn’t a course. It isn’t something that you can run for a few months. In fact, it is a practice that must be ongoing and expansive.
While using a mentoring software platform doesn’t solve all of your HR issues or frustrations, it certainly solves the difficulties surrounding starting a mentoring program.
Don’t be scared away from starting a mentoring program because of the amount of work involved. Take a look at an affordable cloud-based mentoring software platform like Mentorloop. It’ll make your life easier – and improve employee and organisational outcomes.
Interested in seeing mentoring software in action? Request a live demo of the Mentorloop platform.
