Maybe you’ve considered using mentoring software due to its myriad of benefits, or maybe you implemented it to matcch participants but then stopped using it afterwards.
If you’ve done the latter, we think you’re doing your mentoring program a huge disservice. Why? Because there’s so much value that mentoring software gives you post-matching.
While it’s no secret that one of the most attractive things about engaging mentoring software is how easy it is to match at scale, the bulk of the value comes after.
Let’s get to it.
Guide the Entire Mentoring Experience
It’s easy to get caught up thinking of matching as The Big Thing when you’re gearing up to run a program because it really is a crucial stage of the mentoring journey. However, the long-term performance of your program post-matching is equally as important.
Good mentoring software guides everyone through the entire mentoring experience within the program. And by everyone, we mean the mentors, mentees, and the Program Coordinator.
Guiding Program Coordinators
Not all program coordinators have run mentoring programs before. And even if they have, every mentoring program is slightly different. Because of this, some guidance on the standard mentoring program tasks is always good so program coordinators can focus on those unique parts of their mentoring program.
On Mentorloop, your program dashboard gives you visibility on the five elements of mentoring program success (program growth, match rate, participant growth, program health, and contextual feedback) so you can keep a close eye on the pulse of your program. It will also show you program Insights – suggestions relating to data collected from your program about these five aspects so that you can take action on your program data and continuously improve your mentoring program.
Guiding Mentors and Mentees
Mentoring software can be a powerful tool when it comes to guiding your participants through their mentoring journeys. Many of your program’s participants may have not had a formal mentoring relationship before and are unsure of what to do at times. They need some guidance to ensure they have a great experience.
And unless the idea of facilitating tailored one-on-one guidance for every single participant in your program sounds like a good way to spend your time, then having mentoring software help you with the heavy lifting in this area is extremely valuable.
On Mentorloop, participants are also guided throughout their mentoring journey. On their Participant Dashboard, they have everything they need to ensure their mentoring relationshipide is productive. They’re guided through mentoring Milestones and supported with Nudges – timely content and resources relevant to where they are in their journey.
Click below to learn more about the participant experience on Mentorloop.
Provide Asynchronous Mentoring Opportunities
With today’s fully remote and hybrid working structures, it can be difficult to make everyone feel connected and on the same page. Thankfully, mentoring software can provide your team members with a reliable and consistent outlet for knowledge sharing, networking, career development, and more.
Providing asynchronous mentoring opportunities at scale is near-impossible without software. But by using mentoring software and choosing a program structure that’s ‘always-on’, you’ll be able to employ open applications or sign-ups so you can continue recruiting without a set close date. Doing so allows participants to join at any time that suits them, which means new people are always encouraged to enter, and makes it easier to embed mentoring into your organisation’s overall culture.
On Mentorloop, we enable these opportunities by making sure it’s easy for participants to schedule meetings and calls with their mentoring partners. With our robust integrations with the tools your people already use like popular calendars and communication apps, building and maintaining mentoring relationships is made easy on Mentorloop, even if they’re across oceans.
Encourage Participants to Build Personal Advisory Boards
A Personal Advisory Board is a collection of mentoring partners, each with their own distinct skills and areas of expertise. This can include a more traditional “master mentor”, a reverse mentor, a peer-to-peer mentor, a cheer squad mentor, a subject matter expert mentor, and more.
Personal Advisory Boards are a great way to build a culture of mentoring in your organisation and is incredibly beneficial to your people. Having mentoring software is helpful in enabling this in a number of ways.
First of all, just having one place where participants can go to find someone to help with a specific challenge or growth area is a big deal. ARUP’s Mentoring Program Coordinator, Jacqueline Liantonio speaks about why this is so valuable to their program:
Secondly, software that can help make mentoring matches based on specific goals and skills is a great tool to have to encourage and enable this. It’s one thing to have a place to come to when you need support or can offer support, but it’s another thing to be able to bring the right people together.
At Mentorloop, we believe in the power of Personal Advisory Boards, which is why we don’t charge for multiple matches. That means you can enable the creation of more mentoring matches and foster a stronger mentoring culture.
Collect Feedback Easily
Good mentoring software also allows you to collect feedback easily with zero hassle on your end.
Real-time feedback is crucial in a mentoring program. Having the information you can use to improve your program, correct any mishaps, or more effectively guide participants at a time when you can still make a difference (instead of at the end of a program) is the secret to giving participants a great mentoring experience.
Watch this video to learn why we measure mentoring program success differently at Mentorloop:
At Mentorloop, we make sure that you can build quality feedback into your mentoring relationships with Mentorloop’s Mentorloop Quality Score (MQS). This helps you measure how matches are going by having participants periodically provide feedback on their relationships in a timely, unobtrusive, and seamless manner, meaning you get more timely and more accurate feedback more often.
Save Time
Instead of spending hours and hours doing manual mentoring program management, mentoring software can help you manage your program in as little as 30 minutes a week.
Yep, really! That alone is a massive win for many program coordinators!
We know that for many program coordinators, running a mentoring program isn’t your only job. So we’ve developed powerful participant management and momentum management tools, as well as the best reporting and analytics in the market so you don’t have to waste your time on admin and can focus on supporting your participants, as well as getting your other jobs and tasks done.
And if you want details on just how much time you can save running a mentoring program with Mentorloop, check out our Admin Time Comparison Tool. (Trust us, it’s A LOT of time)
Measure & Report Efficiently
A huge benefit of using mentoring software is the ability to measure and report quickly and efficiently. Without software, you’re flying blind: Is the program going well? You don’t know! And—if you want to find out—you’ll have to collect all of the data yourself manually.
On the other hand, mentoring software like Mentorloop gives all the data you need—live—with our Sentiment Feedback Analysis System. It allows you to measure your success in real time on your Live Dashboard and provides an easy way to communicate your program’s impact—as well as your individual impact as the program coordinator running this initiative.
Watch this video to learn more about how Mentorloop measures mentoring success:
TL;DR
Don’t stop using your mentoring platform after matching—you’ll be missing out on some of the biggest benefits of mentoring software.
Ready to see the benefits a mentoring program can bring to your organisation?
