So, you’re afraid mentoring software will cost your business more than it saves and that the ROI might not be there.
We get it. With any big software implementation, there’s always this type of cost hesitancy.
But thankfully for you — if you choose the right mentoring software — this fear is completely unfounded!
If you’re a Team Leader, HR practitioner, NFP Program Coordinator, or anyone who may be mulling over running a mentoring program manually just because of cost, then this is for you. Because at the end of the day, mentoring software is not nearly as costly as trying to run and scale a program manually.
Why’s that? Let’s dive in!
Mentoring Software Can Save You More Than Just Money
Your Time Is Valuable
Let’s face it, your time might be better spent doing other things. A lot of Program Coordinators aren’t brought on only to manage a mentoring program full-time; they have other KPIs.
Let’s look at how mentoring software can save your business money from a time/cost perspective. Say your Program Coordinator’s salary is 100k a year. Well, then spending two weeks setting up a mentoring program is about 4% of that annual salary in cost, or $4K. And this doesn’t even include the time they’ll spend throughout the year manually managing the program. Just think about all the time they would have to invest if they had to do the recruitment, launch, promotion/marketing, and ongoing management of the program manually too!
For more details on just how much time you can save running your program on Mentorloop, check out our Admin Time Comparison Tool:
Mentoring software will not only give your Program Coordinator those two weeks back, it will give them back all the time spent managing that program over the course of the year, as well as improve the overall delivery of your mentoring program. And when you consider how much their time is worth, what’s not to love?
Sacrificing Quality
And while it’s true that running a program manually seems like it can save you money, what is that costing you in terms of quality? Will one person really be able to manage a mentoring program at scale the way customised, automated mentoring software can?
We all know what happens when someone is spread too thin: While things may get done, they don’t get done at the highest level of quality. Just consider all the tedious tasks at every stage of running a mentoring program where that quality can suffer! Speaking of which…
It Saves Program Coordinators From Tedious Tasks
Let’s take a look at some of the most time-consuming tasks, how tedious they can be, and how long they can take.
Matching
Even if you don’t use an algorithm, having participants either match themselves or create their profiles that feature the criteria you want to match them with takes a lot of time and effort. Thankfully, mentoring software can save you that time.
Learn more about how matching works on Mentorloop.
Measurement and Reporting
No one wants to come up with their own analytics, conduct their own satisfaction surveys, and then whip that up into several reports and get them ready to present. No, thank you – not when software can do it for you!
Mentorloop has the best measurement and reporting tools in the market and here’s why.
Sentiment: The Art and Science of Mentoring Success
Mentorloop is the only mentoring platform with real-time Sentiment feedback and analysis.
We measure mentoring success differently here at Mentorloop and that’s because we look at mentoring success in a more holistic point of view. We like to support data with context. I can hear you thinking now, “well, you can’t accurately measure context,” and in a way, you’d be right. But when it comes to initiatives like mentoring programs, context is crucial. And here’s why:
So how do we support this holistic approach on the Mentorloop platform? By ensuring we have a good balance between the art and science of measuring mentoring program success!
With Mentorloop’s Sentiment Analysis System, you get all the data points you expect, like tracking match rates, measuring participation growth over time, and number of attended meetings and activity, among others. In addition to that, you are also empowered to build your mentoring narrative by weaving people and their stories back into your reporting, tracking their sentiment and satisfaction through quality, timely feedback.
Learn more about Mentorloop’s art + science approach to measuring mentoring program success:
And to top it all off, not only are Mentorloop’s tools easy to use but they also look good, are easy to export, and are ready to share. So you don’t just save time getting the reports done, you’re also saving time getting them presentation-ready.
Guidance and Support for Participants
We’re pretty sure you don’t have the time to guide everyone by yourself. How will you even find out who needs support? How will you know when it’s the right time to intervene?
Thankfully, mentoring software like Mentorloop will tell you. This means you can spend more of your time ensuring your participants feel supported by a real person. And—bonus—you’ll only need to spend your time helping those who really need it. This turns out to usually only be about 4% of your cohort that needs to be rematched due to busy schedules, unmotivated mentees, etc.
It’s a common misconception that mentoring software is only valuable in the beginning stages of launching a mentoring program. Find out why that’s a misguided way of thinking about its value:
How Much Are Your People Worth To You?
And now we come to the really difficult-to-measure part – the value you put on the overall development of your people and the organisation as a whole. How much value do you put on the learning and development of your people, or the diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organisation, etc.?
Study after study will tell you that investing in your people is a good thing, both in a business sense and, let’s be real, just in general. And while how much that’s worth to your organisation in a dollar amount varies, it’s universally acknowledged that this investment is important and valuable.
Running a mentoring program is a great way to put that into practice and if you’re going to do this, you might as well do it in the most effective and most efficient way possible. After all, that’s one way to ensure you get the best return on that investment. Whether or not you decide to enlist the assistance of mentoring software, you’re investing something into running a mentoring program anyway, albeit just in the form of time and effort on the part of the program coordinator/s (which still costs money). And as we previously covered, this isn’t really giving you any notable savings, all things considered.
So if you want to get your people initiatives right, it’s worth investing in tools that will ensure you’re doing them in the best possible way. In the case of mentoring, that involves investing in mentoring software.
Let’s Talk Costs
Alright, so what does mentoring software actually cost? For larger organisations, it’s about $4 per person—a tiny fraction of an organisation’s L&D budget or membership fee, especially considering it’s 373 times cheaper than an in-person training session and 680 times cheaper than executive coaching.
So all that worry about cost really loses its sting when you think about how small that investment is for the return of overall gain in the quality of the program you’ll be running and the time it frees up for the people running it.
The Bottom Line
Yes, mentoring software costs some money, but you’ll more than make up for it in quality and maximising your time at work. Not to mention, you’ll only be giving your team members work they can actually handle—and not over-burdening them with an extra initiative on top of their already heavy workload. The perks of this? Your employees’ never-ending gratitude—which truly is immeasurable.
Ready to see how Mentorloop works? Visit the pricing page to check out Mentorloop Pro, or book a demo if you’re interested in an enterprise solution.
