01: Your Program's Purpose

Let’s start with why we’re here, shall we?

(Don’t worry, we’re not getting too existential)

From observing hundreds of programs run with Mentorloop, we have found that most programs often fall into the following six categories:

👉 1. New Graduates and Onboarding Employees:

Helping new starters transition into your organisation with ease.

Mentoring for onboarding provides new hires with all the necessary tools for functioning well and adapting to the organisation quickly. A great way to approach this is by assigning new starters with a peer mentor. As remote workforce numbers are trend higher, organisations should be adapting their onboarding processes to meet this trend. 

👉 2. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

Championing particular values, identities and/or demographics to ensure everyone can bring their full self to work with confidence. Examples of these programs established to; assist more women or people of colour into leadership roles, ensure more voices across the organisation are heard by senior staff or foster a better, more inclusive community overall.

👉 3. Leadership Development

Developing leadership capabilities amongst participants.

Mentoring has long existed to form succession plans at organisations and trades around the world. Today, if we rely too heavily on networks and unconscious bias to surface tomorrows leaders, we will often see more of the same types of people move into positions of influence. These programs often focus on developing the ‘hard skills’ of leadership; ‘soft skills.’

👉 4. Skills Development:

Likely the most common of mentoring programs in corporate settings, these programs create a channel for professional and personal growth.

Whether you have a learning and development program in swing already, it can’t go without it’s most cost-effective and long-term impactful brother, mentoring. 

This bottom-up approach where your people drive your people strategy, works far better than a top-down strategy of pushing learning upon them. And we’ve seen this success across our beloved clients and beyond. In fact, those that are intending to stay with their organisation for more than five years, are more than twice as likely to have a mentor.

👉 5. Cross Department/Location

Often dubbed ‘the un-obvious connection’ these programs focus on forming new connections outside of a participant’s immediate department and/or location. A great way to foster collaboration and strengthen cross-functional outcomes, especially as many teams make remote and hybrid work more permanent.

👉 6. Community Culture

Build networks of support within your organisation. Some examples of these are parents returning to work, particular interest groups or mentoring circles. This category would also be well suited to a variety of NFPs and Charities that centre around a community support mission. 

Of course, your program’s purpose may fall into more than one of these six categories. For the purpose of this program explorer, however, please select the one that best suits your goals below. If none of the above options resonates with you, feel free to select ‘other and/or not listed.’