Arriving in 2023 with diminishing budgets and being forced to do more with less with hiring freezes and layoffs – the future is unknown. Investing in employee retention not only saves you the cost and time of hiring and training new employees but also sets your company apart as a supportive and dedicated workplace. And while the current talent market may be uncertain, that doesn’t mean your employees’ professional growth should be limited. This is where using mentorship for retention comes in.
This webinar hosted by Talenza explored the benefits of mentorship as a cost-effective solution for retaining top talent and supporting their career growth within your organization.
Introductions
[Emily]
Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today. I’m going to jump in and introduce our lovely panelists so really appreciate everyone joining. To give you a little bit of context we’ve invited our clients here today because we’re hearing a lot about the word ‘retention’ and as we’re discussing this internally as a business within Talenza, we have been thinking about the themes that are really emerging in terms of driving retention – and mentorship is absolutely one of them.
So thank you for joining us and wanting to really elevate mentorship within your business. I’m going to hand it straight over to our lovely panelists. So Heidi would you be able to introduce yourself?
[Heidi]
Sure. Thanks, Emily! Hello, everyone! Great to be here. My name is Heidi Holmes. I am one of the co-founders of Mentorloop. And I came together to start Mentorloop with my co-founder Lucy probably close to a decade ago with the mission and vision to make mentoring more accessible to more people. So it’s a pleasure to be here today talking about mentoring and I’d like to hand over to my colleague here Andrea from HP.
[Andrea]
Hi everyone, I’m Andrea O’Halloran from HP and I work as the National Sales Manager for the distribution SMB team and in my spare time, in my job under our WIN (Women’s Impact Network) Committee, I also look after our National Mentoring Program and we do that in partnership with Heidi’s company, she just spoke about, Mentorloop. Really looking forward to chatting today and telling you a little bit more about our program.
[Dorothy]
Good morning, my name is Dorothy Maciaga AKA ‘Dot’. I’ve worked at HP for the last six-seven years as an executive assistant and an administrative coordinator for the commercial channel team which covers Australia and Malaysia. Also, as part of that, we’re looking after, with Andrea, together, part of the mentoring program under the WIN umbrella at HP. Thank you for having us, it’s a great pleasure to be here.
The Basics of Mentorship
[Emily]
Thank you all we’re so excited that you can join us. We’re definitely in good company with this panel today. Just before we get started, I will just run through a small bit of housekeeping. We do have the webinar chat open for any Q&A. So there will be around 15 minutes at the end for these women to be able to answer your questions. So any questions that you have please pop it into the webinar chat and we’ll be able to get to those at the end. So we might just get straight into it.
Heidi, I’ll start with you. So can you explain to us – what is mentorship? So how is it defined and what are the roles of the mentor and the mentee as a part of any mentorship program?
[Heidi]
Thanks, Emily. I think it’s a good place to start because what we’ve learned over the years is that mentoring is a very charged word. People have often a very clear idea of what it means to them and that’s typically how maybe mentoring has played out for them. And I think if we think about mentoring in a traditional sense, often it’s viewed as very hierarchical. So it’s something that is a long-term relationship, it’s… maybe a mentor that has 20 plus years experience, they’re an Oracle, and, you know… A mentee is someone that they’ve seen something in them that encourages themto take them under their wing and take them on this journey up the ladder.
And look, that is definitely true of some mentoring. But I guess that comes to why we started Mentorloop as well. We wanted to change that very traditional hierarchical view of mentoring. And so if I think about mentoring today, I think it’s important to think about mentoring in a broader context and so, you know, we hear labels around mentoring, around reverse mentoring, peer mentoring… That’s all true. But I think what holds very true for us at Mentorloop and what we’ve seen over the years is that the most impactful mentoring relationships are reciprocal in nature. And so I think that just brings us to a level of understanding that in the relationship, it’s, you know, human connections that we’re making here and it’s important to be respectful and trusting in those relationships and acknowledging that we all have something to learn and potentially we all have something to teach, whichever role we’re playing. So I think that’s a nice sort of centering definition of mentoring. You know, reciprocal in nature.
But also if we wanted to get down to, I guess, a definition, I think, you know, the role of the mentee is pretty true to how we think of it. But again, in the context of where we’re at in a hybrid world and, you know, the world going forward and what matters to people today, you know… I think we hear a lot of things about authenticity, being vulnerable as leaders, and active listening… And so when I think about how we sell the benefits of mentorship to a mentor and moving beyond you’re just doing this as, you know, sort of an altruistic move, I think these are some of these key soft skills that, you know, us as individuals looking up to leaders are looking for. And I think, you know, mentoring has a really big role to play in developing some of these core skills for future leaders through mentoring as well. So I think, you know, that definition of a mentor has expanded and how we think about it in terms of the benefits available to mentors as well.
Benefits of Mentoring for the Organization
[Emily]
Yeah, great answer. And that is a great segue into my next question, Heidi.
So, Andrea, I’ll pass over to you to answer this one, if that’s all right.
I’m really interested to hear about the benefits of mentoring and what you’ve seen in HP as part of the implementation progress, particularly for organizations. Is there any insight that you can share?
[Andrea]
Yeah, there’s so many things and there’s actually, you know, a number of things. You know, after this call, you know, links and, you know, details of how the program’s gone for us at HP that we can share a little bit after. But I can, you know, touch on some of those for you today. You know, I guess the first one is the contribution that mentoring makes to our overall performance as a business. And many of you would have seen, you know, companies out of the NASDAQ, there’s lots of reports which we read when we started this journey two and a half years ago with Mentorloop and their team. There’s a lot of data that shows that companies like ours and, you know, we’re HP, in IT, you all know what we do, it shows that companies like ours outperform their competitors by having a mentor program.
And Emily, you touched really early on about retention and that’s why a lot of the clients are on the call sort of, you know, listening in today around mentoring, right? And one of the things we’ve seen, particularly with Gen Z, one of the top one to three things they are looking for as a benefit or as a requirement, even, and it’s honestly become, what we’re finding, is a bit of a new normal and a bit of a standard expectation. They want networking. They want networking and they also want mentoring straight out of the gate, no question.
And I think the thing about Mentorloop is it really allows us, with the algorithm, as a team – and it’s Dot and I and other members of the WIN committee that are running that for HP, it really helps us lever the algorithm in order to match people. Because you know this has been a passion of my of mine you know for five plus years and the most stressful thing in the mini little mentoring programs we put together is matching people and whether I knew the people or didn’t know the people. If I knew them, I actually felt it was more stress. If I think they’ll get along from across the country, we also have New Zealand and Singapore, so we’re also talking across the pond, you know, I guess where I’m less familiar with some of the people. So the algorithm for us is a massive benefit organization-wise.
And I’ve got to say, you know, we start to look at some of the scores, because we do a lot of scoring with the health check-up that Mentorloop give us, our staff score currently is about 4.3 and that’s their experience, how they’re enjoying the app, and we’ve really… What’s really exciting, I guess, for us as well is how engaged some of our younger staff are. And I think having a progressive web app which can jump on your phone and chat to your mentor or you can do it on your PC, you can, you know, connect Zoom, you know, straight in as well, and, you know, connect that way or set up your own Zoom meeting…
There’s a lot of benefits that way but, you know, I guess the big one, you know, the big one for us, you know, in running this is about the increased feeling of connectedness that our staff are seeing. And we started this, you know, just before COVID so I think that really sort of helped us really bolster the program whilst people were sitting at home in lockdown. Particularly, you know, our poor Melbourne team that were in lockdown more than anyone you know we’ve got a lot of take-up, I’ve gotta say, from the state of Victoria at the time. But what’s been really great to see is everyone, almost everyone, has remained on the program.
And I think the other great thing that we’ve seen is there’s a lot of people who are signed up as a mentor and a mentee, you know, not just one. So they’ve actually built a number of different connections, you know, through the program as well. And I guess the last one for me are those really intangibles that I hear about when I talk to people that are on the program. Things like just getting help with a problem from someone that’s not your manager or not someone inside your team. You know, like building up your… You know as the young ones tell me it’s like “your peeps”, you know, or “your people”.
A lot of my team are in sales so they’ve naturally got that networking layer and those opportunities to network, but not every role and not BU (business unit), you know, has those opportunities. And I guess that’s the thing I love about mentoring – just being able to offer to everyone, everywhere. And I’ve got to say, the take-up’s been amazing and we as a business are really happy with, you know, a lot of the outcomes that we’ve seen.
[Emily]
You touched on so many great points there, Andrea.
[Andrea]
I hope not too many.
[Laughter]
[Emily]
No, no, that’s why we invited you here, thank you!
The inclusivity aspect of it, particularly the scalability elements of it as well. And I know that we’re going to talk a little bit more later on how the success is measured and ROI, and you touched on a little bit of that as well. So thank you so much for sharing.
But we’ve spoken a lot about the benefits to the organization. But what about the mentor and the mentee? Can you speak a little bit more to the benefits for the different players within the program?
Benefits of Mentoring for the Participants
[Dorothy]
Sure, not a problem. So, look, I think I’ll start off by linking it with what Heidi mentioned, you know, about the “oracle”. I think there seems to be an idea that, you know, mentees, you know, when they connect with the mentor, they… the mentor, know everything and it’s the oracle to go to for all the answers and everything. Look, the way I see it and the way we’ve witnessed it within HP is that it really is just an exchange. Both mentors and mentees benefit from it. The mentor can be younger or older, it really doesn’t matter. It’s basically an exchange of skills, of knowledge, of experience that both people can benefit from, sharing and learning from each other.
You know, if it’s a mentee, there is an element of accountability, you know. There is a responsibility on a mentee to come prepared to the meeting, you know, take responsibility for the actions and drive whatever it is that they want to drive, whatever it is that they want to learn.
The mentor, you know, from our experience, they thrive on the idea that they can share the experience, the knowledge. It gives them a sense of purpose and fulfilment as well. I would imagine for the older employees as well because a lot of the time as we grow older, and I know it for a fact, you know, renumeration is not really the ideal, you know, it’s not the payoff that we all strive for. Sometimes we need a bit more to keep us going. And so the sense of fulfilment and teaching others is a wonderful benefit. The mentors also learn new skills and new perspectives from the mentees. You know, the mentee comes with their own experiences, their own knowledge, their own skills with technology, for example. You know, the mentor can actually learn from them as well. The mentor can teach mentees communication skills and again they learn about communication skills themselves as well. Because it takes active listening, because it takes, you know non-judgmental conversation and guiding them and coaching them. But more importantly, providing feedback. And from that feedback, the mentees can then take that and learn and develop their own professional and personal development. And they also have a sense of purpose from that. Because I think what’s missing these days in a lot of societies is the village mentality. You know, we need to be able to learn from each other and from the older generation as well and it’s an exchange.
Plus, you know what, it looks fantastic on a CV, let’s be honest. If you are looking for another job, it looks fantastic on a CV, “I was a mentor to such and such” or, you know, “I participate in this mentoring program.”
So, look, I mean, I could go on. There are so many benefits – networking, collaboration, you mentioned reciprocity, and absolutely giving back. But I think also on an overall scale, there is integration because it allows us to start up conversations on diversity, on different genders, or diversity… cultural or any other diversities. And it also makes people feel that the company who is running these programs is willing to invest in them. And so when you’re talking about retention of staff, a lot of these programs allow people to go to another job within the same company, transfer of skills, networking and all that. So yeah, that’s… I couldn’t recommend it more.
How To Implement A Mentoring Program
[Emily]
I loved all of what you said there, Dot. But in particular, it takes a village. I think that is so lost on a lot of workplaces. But even, you know, the intrinsic drive and motivation to see things differently, it’s just really… I guess, yeah, it’s expanded once you have the opportunity to talk about it with someone else and having a mentor to be able to share and get a different perspective on things. Yeah, so many great things there, the oracle, I love it, I love it all.
Heidi, we’ll move on to the next question here. So, in terms of implementation, how can an organization Implement a mentorship program much like HP have done?
[Heidi]
Yeah, I think what’s been clear from both what Dot and Andrea have talked about is, you know, there’s no denying that people value mentoring. But what you may not be aware of if you’ve never run a mentor program is that, you know, it can be difficult. And, you know, that’s not just around the admin burden of running a program, but as Dot mentioned, you know, it can be this risk sort of placed on people to, you know, go and perform the matching, for instance. You know, there’s kind of a lot of risk, and what’s the reward here for me?
So, you know, I think mentor programs often within organizations, people go, yeah, that’s a great idea but where are we going to fit it in and who’s the owner of this? Because what we see as well that mentoring fits across what… a framework we use which is called “Jobs to be Done”. And so, you know, we come to work, and particularly within the HR profession, you’re crossing over DEI, retention and engagement, there’s a compliance piece there, learning and development… and so you’ve got all of these jobs to be done and sometimes it’s hard to define where mentoring can fit because it can fit across all of these jobs to be done.
So what I think, you know, in terms of thinking about what, you know, implementing a program, I think it’s important to start with a clear goal. And that might be around where you want to start but also having a vision for where you want to finish.
And I think HP is a great example of, you know, this program came out of a D&I initiative and now is looking about, you know, that scalability piece and wanting to make sure it’s inclusive and accessible to all. And I think, you know, a lot of our clients that have been able to replicate that, you know, Xero and REA Group are another one, you know, starting with a clear group but then acknowledging that, you know, we want to move beyond, sort of, special programs for special people and growing from there.
You know, scaling mentoring is difficult but it will be one of the most inclusive and scalable people initiatives that you can offer. It is relevant to all of us but I think where I’ve seen, I guess, programs increment well and I guess what I’m sort of a big fan of these programs that I would call asynchronous mentor programs.
So, you know, we would have been familiar with maybe the cohort style where you have sort of a start date and an end date. And I think they absolutely have their place but when I think about inclusivity and scalability, I think about asynchronous mentoring programs and that is allowing people to opt in when it matters to them. So rather than being tapped on the shoulder and told this is… you know, when you apply, it’s more about “I’m facing this problem” or “I’ve got this blocker” or “I want to know how to get from A to B” and “I want to know how to do that now, I don’t want to wait six months for the program to start.”
I think that’s what we talk about when we see some of our most successful programs and customers, you know, HP being one, is that they’ve moved to this sustainable mentoring culture. And so it’s always on and people can find that connection when they need it and it may just be two or three conversations or it may be a six-month relationship or it may move into something that’s sort of lifelong. But there’s no labels put on it and it’s very much driven by the individual and what they need in the flow of their work. And so when you think about that, it becomes a very productive and engaging initiative as well. I think it’s difficult to sort of, you know, want to start there but I think it’s very achievable for most organizations to end up there. And I think this has even more relevance in a hybrid working world as well when maybe there’s different periods of time where you’re feeling that isolation or that lack of connectedness. You’re not getting those water cooler moments or maybe you’re a new employee and, you know, you want it as part of that onboarding. I think when we think about mentorship and making it available through an organizational program that is always on and always available, I think that’s a really valuable employee proposition.
[Emily]
Yeah, absolutely. The on-demand element of it, I mean, we live in such an on-demand society so having what you need at your fingertips is, yeah, absolutely really important to be able to support yourself in whatever stage of your life cycle that you’re working through.
[Heidi]
Yeah, and I think, you know, Dot touched on it with the, you know, the role of the mentee and the mentor and switching between. I think when you run it like that as well, it gives that permission for people to play both the role of mentee and mentor. And if you think about what people want, you know, is often they want that ability to play the role of manager or to know what it’s like to take on, sort of, more leadership responsibilities and when you can’t necessarily do that and just kind of a reporting role piece I guess, mentoring also opens up those doors where you can start to take on some of those additional leadership responsibilities.
Sorry, Dot, I thought you were going to jump in there so I’ll let you go.
[Dorothy]
Yeah, I just wanted to jump in quickly and just add to what Heidi was mentioning. I think with the mentoring program, it’s fantastic because it’s structured but it’s also flexible enough for people to pick and choose and tailor it to what they want. You know, some people want to have only three meetings with their mentors some people want to have a monthly meeting or, you know, an ongoing relationship. But I think more to the point that if you want to instill a mentoring program within a company, it has to be a cultural change. It has to be a mentality of mentoring.
I’ll give you an example. So, HP is also certified as a mental health first aid organization. So we’ve got a lot of first aiders especially since, you know, the COVID and the lockdowns – that’s a form of mentoring. That is also listening to people and that’s also mentoring them(on) how to deal with their emotional challenges or work pressures or, you know… So it is really an overall culture of mentoring that’s needed.
And also that’s one more thing, we’ve also encouraged our staff through the management to connect with the mentors around the annual review process and we found that really, really beneficial as well.
Measuring Mentoring Success
[Emily]
Yeah, that’s great to hear. Thanks, Dot. Andrea, I’ll pass back over to you for this question. And you have highlighted this a little bit in your earlier answer, but how is success measured in HP’s mentorship program?
You just have to go onto a different device.
[Andrea]
Can you hear me okay?
[Emily]
Perfect, thank you.
[Andrea]
Yeah, sorry about that. I do it all the time. Don’t we all? I always say the best things when I’m on mute, I’ve got to say.
Yeah, in terms of the overall program and our measures, what’s been really great, I guess, for us working with Mentorloop is the health check dashboard. So being able to… being able to look at how the dashboard formulates, you know, who our people are, who they’re connected to. So, you know, one of the… probably number one thing for us in terms of KPIs is how many people have we got matched in this program. That’s a big one. The program recommendation I think is sort of 70% and above. You know, our internal local goals is sort of, you know, 85 to 90. We’d like to make sure that everybody who’s on there is, you know, matched at any point in time. But you know, as you sort of touched on as well, Emily, and I think Dot touched on it too, you know, the whole piece about just being able to self-serve, have a mentor when I need it, switch off for a bit when I don’t. When I haven’t got bandwidth I might just see my mentor every two months instead of weekly when I was really ramping up or I had some problems that I needed to solve. So there’s a lot of variables and everybody’s life is different but I think the, you know, some of the best feedback we’ve had from the team has just been able to go on there, scroll through and see who’s available. Because I think we’ve got to all remember as organizations and with our people, not everybody’s the same. There’s a lot of introverts and for an introvert to go on the approach to somebody and say “will you be my mentor…” I remember seeing this comedy skit that said it’s like saying to someone “are you my father?” for some people. Yeah, okay, it wouldn’t be for me because I’m a bit of an extrovert. I’d probably be cool with it. All they can say is “no”, worst case, but I come from a sales background so it’s different for me. But we’ve got to remember it’s not the same for everyone. So having a program there where it’s these people are available and actually want to talk to me and potentially have put themselves out there to help me and other people as a mentor, it just makes it easy because they click a button on the app and they get a yes or no response back from the mentor. And most of the time, you know, we’ve spoken to all of our mentors on the program, if you’re sitting there as available and you are in that available mode, we’ve got a lot that aren’t available because they’re, you know, working on, sort of, three or four mentees simultaneous. So we understand the bandwidth of a mentor as well. They can only hold up so many.
Also, some of the other things we’re measuring is the MQS (Mentoring Quality Score) average score. As I said, we score at 4.3 to 4.4 out of 5 which is really great feedback from our staff. We also look at the number of active participants. We’re hoping to, you know, take our program into a couple of other countries where… We’re currently in very close talks with the US at the moment so super excited to, you know, take this into other areas of the business. We’re also talking to our Global Talent pool about another area which sits very close with mentorship, which is sponsorship. You know, we all know it can get a bit confusing for people. It’s a completely different thing but we’re looking at working with the Mentorloop team to maybe create a bit of a cohort for that as well.
So, and that’s the thing I love about working with Heidi and the team. You know, we come up with all these ideas of… we actually want something else now as on top of what we’re doing, you know, to complement, you know, what we’re already doing. And it’s really nice that, you know, even though you’re not really a startup anymore, Heidi, you’re kind of 10 years in, you’re making me feel old, but,you know,
[Heidi]
We’re one of those proper businesses now!
[Andrea]
You still have that startup mentality and we’re like, “We want to get into other countries, how many language packs have you got?” And, you know, for us, we’re a pretty big org, you know, we’ve got 50,000 staff, you know, around the globe and, you know, mentoring is, you know, such an important thing for our business. And, you know, we’ve had it, we’ve got it in many countries in lots of different forms but I think the real difference with the app is it does a lot of the work for us. You know, when we started doing the analysis originally without Heidi’s team, we realized we’d have to hire a mentoring advocate just to run Australia. You know, that’s like one human to run the whole thing until we met Heidi and the team and they were able to, you know, with the power of technology, which is a nice match for us in terms of, you know, who we are, to be able to sort of put those pieces together and really use the tech to make people match. And I can tell you, one great thing about our program and this is a big thing in our organization as I’m sure it is for many of yours. We do not run it off any Excel spreadsheets whatsoever, right? It’s all live in the tool. We can see, you know, who the members are, we can see who everyone’s connected with, connected to, so, you know, for Dot and I, as the two people that are running the program, the dashboard has really really made it easy for us as well.
[Heidi]
I was just going to add on that ROI piece. Because I guess the topic of today too was about, you know, we’ve got sort of… there’s a bit of an uncertainty out in the market and budgets are under pressure and so that ROI, you know, conversation is more important than ever. And one thing that I come back to with mentoring, not just because I run Mentorloop, but, you know, there’s no doubt that everyone believes in mentoring. They think it’s a good thing. But sometimes it falls into this “nice-to-have” category because people think, you know, “what’s the tangible benefit here?” And I think that’s because when we think about running a program, you know, in a manual way, yes, you might be able to get by doing some of the onboarding and matching (on) spreadsheets and emails, but it becomes very difficult to measure the impact. And so, you know, that’s been a big part of our focus of the last couple of years. Elevating mentoring to show it has a real, you know, place in your people initiatives in contributing to the things that matter across retention, engagement, DEI outcomes, productivity. And so we do that across five key elements. Because you can’t just do it thinking about quantitative metrics. Yes, you need to know people are matching and meeting. But whether you’re meeting three times or five times doesn’t define what’s a better relationship. You need to be doing it across, you know, multiple areas of the relationship. And so, that’s a match percentage, so the mentoring quality score Andrea spoke to, but also then making sure people are satisfied during the course of that relationship. So how we collect feedback by pulse surveys in the flow of mentoring. This, you know, when we’re all looking for good news stories, this is where you can turn to mentoring. And, you know, I think some of that qualitative data that we collate really brings to life, for a lot of key stakeholders, the true impact of mentoring. So when people say, “through this relationship, in having a conversation with Tracy, I was able to find a way that I could navigate a career transition internally.” You know, for a senior executive, it’s a qualitative statement, but you can see the tangible value in that around retention and engagement.
And so, you know, I think mentoring, while it’s been questioned whether, you know, what, whether this is a nice-to-have or a need-to-have, I think there is a there is a sophistication in how we can run and report on mentor programs that really elevates it as a very, you know, very valuable people initiative that will have a return on investment on your bottom line.
How Algorithmic Matching Works
[Emily]
Thanks for that, Heidi. And thanks for that, Andrea. I had a couple of questions that I wrote down and you both answered all of them so thank you so much.
With the algorithm matching, Heidi, can you give us a little bit more insight on how that works?
[Heidi]
Yeah, I guess people sometimes worry when you hear “algorithm.” They’re thinking, you know, is this going to actually, you know, enhance bias? But I guess how we think about the algorithm, is it’s one element of creating a successful relationship. We don’t do the percentage match rate like you might see in a dating app or some other tools. You know, it’s not whether you’re a 96% match or a 92% match – what’s going to be better? It’s actually about getting a good quality alignment on some things and then creating conditions for people to thrive within that mentoring relationship.
So the algorithm is there to remove bias because when individuals are doing it, they might think Barry is best suited to Jeffrey because they think they know these people. But that might be then at the detriment of somebody else. So our algorithm is programmed in the sense that it looks at taking a global score across the cohort and ensuring everyone gets an equitable, quality match. We don’t want to be looking at the first person on the list and ensuring they get the best match whereas then the last person is left with who’s left.
So the inputs to that, again, it varies because no one mentor program is the same. There might be elements where DE&I criteria comes into the algorithm and this has a greater weighting, so we do have the flexibility. But as a standard rule, we’re looking at, you know, skills and goals. Why are you here, what do you want to achieve? And then, you know, who’s available and has that expertise. So, you know, they’re kind of the main inputs. But obviously, flexibility to work with our clients to understand, you know, what’s the organizational objective they want to achieve here and can we do that through matching as well.
So, you know, I would view the algorithm, not as some sort of robotic, you know, perfect matchmaker. It’s more about, how does it, you know, make this a scalable offering within your organization without compromising on quality. And removing risk and bias in the matching process for the person that’s got to run the program as well.
[Emily]
Yeah, so one of the many benefits of not using an Excel spreadsheet, I guess, yeah.
[Andrea]
And I think the other thing in the app as well, you know, to be able to put your picture in there kind of feels like Facebook. I don’t have Facebook but, you know, for people that do, it feels a little bit like that and you get to describe yourself in the… you know, what do you like – you like books, you like cats, you like dogs, whatever else and we created it in our own way and kind of… a little bit in our HP speak along with our, you know, because we wanted to sound like us and feel like us.
But the other thing I wanted to touch on, like, from a gender point of view as much as, because I know many of the people on the call might be running this through HR, they might be running it through one of their subcommittees like we do. So when we started this, we started this with women in mind, and we started this through the Women’s Impact Network. But we made it available to everyone, you know, to the men there that are allies, to absolutely everyone in the organization. What’s really interesting when you look at our members right now – it’s 55% women, 45% men, and 5% non-binary. Dot and I did go through about six months worth of pain of having a lot of men message us early on going, “Can I join or is it just for women? Can I join?” So we went through a little bit of that because of how we put it out there, you know, to the world. But I think that message has finally got through and everybody knows, you know, it’s for everybody.
[Dorothy]
Yeah, and I just wanted to jump in. Fill in what after Heidi just mentioned. The algorithms work fantastically but at times we also found that two individuals just don’t get along. It doesn’t matter what the stats will tell you. Right? So there is a flexibility, there is an option that they can opt out of it. So just because you have been matched up with a mentor or a mentee doesn’t mean that you have to stick to this, with this relationship. You have a choice to opt out and you can then, you know, manually match up with someone else.
[Emily]
Yeah, thanks for that, Dot.
We just had a couple of questions come through here. And I’m sure our panellists can see these as well.
Can that algorithm be configured to suit our needs? So, Heidi, I might pass over to you if you wanted to add… I know that there’s been a bit of conversation…
[Heidi]
Yeah, so you might have covered this but yes, absolutely. You know, we’re not… We’re not saying that we’re the oracle and that there’s some amazing secret sauce that gives the perfect match. We don’t think that exists ever. At the end of the day, to Dot’s point there, sometimes it can all look good on paper but you just don’t gel. So, yes, we’re customizing… We’re able to customize the algorithm to, you know, to suit our clients’ needs. We will provide some guidance on that. So, you know, it comes down to some things around how many people in your program, you know, if you’ve got 200 there’s no point collecting 50 pieces of data – you want to focus in on what are the two or three things that you want to match on in terms of criteria. So we will provide guidance and advice but yeah, absolutely. There is some flexibility in that.
Cohort Sizes and Limits
[Emily]
Awesome, thanks, Heidi. And just jumping across this other question that’s come through, “Is there a limit on how many people can be in a cohort in the system at any one time?”
[Heidi]
Again, no. You know, we’re working with some non-for-profits, community groups with 50 people in their program and the programs run by volunteers through to, you know, organizations such as, you know, HP, Woolworths, you know, where we’re getting up to thousands of people in a program. So, you know, it’s very much been designed with this… the concept of making mentoring more accessible. And a part of that, in terms of our business model, is being able to work with programs of different sizes and cohorts.
So, you know, again, size of program does determine some design elements or mechanics. You know, if you’ve got a thousand-person program, I would not recommend using our manual match tool. You know, so, again, that flexibility that we build in the tool to meet the individual program requirements because, unfortunately, what we’ve learned is not every program is the same.
Internal and External Program Participants
[Emily]
Thanks, Heidi.
Another question has just come through here. “Do all the mentors have to be a part of the same company as the mentees in your system?” So if there is a company like HP, can a mentor be connected with someone or meant to be connected with someone externally and vice versa?
[Heidi]
Yeah. So in terms of Mentorloop, we don’t define who your participants are. So for instance Andrea and Dot could invite people outside of HP to their program if they wanted to. Or they could run, you know, obviously an internal company program. Where I think we’ve got some examples of this. Is that somebody might be a participant, you know, in, say, the Woolworths mentoring program but they might also be a participant in a member association. So they might have also signed up to the Institute of Managers and Leaders mentor program. So in terms of, I guess, the functionality of Mentorloop, you can be a participant across multiple programs from one login. In terms of, if you were setting up a program, it is up to you who you want to invite to your program. So it could be internal or external.
And you know a dream of mine has always been to set up, you know, a cross-company mentor program. You know, where you might have a HP and a Woolies coming together to do cross-collaboration. But I think, you know… Well as I said, well, the software can do that. You need, you know, there’s still, I guess, an evolution of how mentoring is playing out and I still think for that cross-company piece, that there’s still some, I guess, hurdles for people to
overcome like that. But yeah, there’s no, sort of, limitations in terms of who you want to invite.
Andrea
Yeah, in terms of what we chose to do, we chose to keep ours internal only at HP. We’ve got a lot of people, you know, to lever as, you know, mentors and mentees but that doesn’t mean that, you know, people in my team have got mentors from Microsoft and other companies people they’ve worked with previously. And that’s fine and they’ve got those outside the program and, you know, they certainly, you know, have those conversations with their managers around, you know, their other mentors because there’s not just one. And sometimes you’ve got mentors for different reasons. You’ve got certain mentors who are great at, you know, helping you with your professional development and then you’ve got other mentors that are really good at helping you with that personal side. It might be, you know, in areas of presenting or, you know, whatever the skill set is that you’re looking to learn. So quite often we find with people they’ve got multiple people for different reasons. But as I said, for us, we’ve kept it internal only so there has to be a HP address – email address – to, you know, come on board, but we are looking at some other things at the moment.
You know, we are looking at some separate cohort programs that we want to link back. You know, with some graduates in certain countries of certain universities that we get approached by that want to come on board. And for some of those programs, it’s got to be defined to a cohort because it just opens… you know, because they’ve got an email address which is a University email and that type of thing. So we are looking at some different cohorts that actually make sense for us as a business in terms of that external piece but as our overall flavor of everything, you can match with anyone, it’s internal at the moment due to privacy and, you know, how staff would decide. You want to be in that sort of comfortable space, you know, where it’s internal at the moment.
But you know what, in the future, I might be interested in that, Heidi, that, you know, cross-company piece because it’s really interesting, right? And even though we’re just in IT, we have people come to us through lots of different Industries – so many skills that are transferable, right? Like some of the amazing people I’ve worked with came from a completely different industry and they come in with a real fresh, different approach and lens to, you know, what we’re usually defining as success in our industry. So I think it’s all really interesting.
[Emily]
Yeah, it really is.
I saw that you had unmuted yourself for a moment there. Is there anything that you wanted to add just before we wrap up?
[Dorothy]
No, I just wanted to add what Andrea just mentioned that, you know, our registrations are currently internal only but that’s also for you know security reasons. Because, you know, we need to be able to monitor who uses the platform because it is an internal HP discussion. And like Andrea said, there has to be a level of trust, there has to be a level of security. And I’m sure that Heidi can also touch on the security measures that they’ve got in place themselves.
[Heidi]
Yeah, I think with a lot of our corporate customers and that scalability piece comes in, you know, those Enterprise features that you’re looking for around single sign-on to make that authentication piece. Absolutely, we’ve been global since day one so, you know, while we’re female and founded, you know, headquartered in Melbourne, we’ve got a team in the UK, we’ve got to be compliant across lots of different privacy and infosec policy jurisdictions so GDPR compliant. So yeah, you know, obviously that security and privacy piece definitely comes into play as a software platform and, again, you know, the scalability piece there of working with different types of organizations is something that we’ve had experience with at different levels.
[Emily]
All right, on that note, we’re just one minute over time so we’ll wrap up here but if you do have any further questions, you’ll have the opportunity to ask Heidi, Andrea, and Dot directly because I will send around the recording and some additional resources from Mentorloop as well within the next 24 hours. So we’ll pop up the recording on YouTube and share the link with you.
Thank you so much Heidi, Andrea, and Dot. Really appreciate you sharing all your insights with us. It’s been a really insightful chat and obviously, I’ve really enjoyed it so I know that our clients on the call would have really enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much.
