To start a mentoring program at work, follow six steps. Pick one goal, decide who joins, set matching rules, train your mentors, set a meeting rhythm, and report what changed. Here they are in order, written for the person who’ll run it day to day. Last updated by Shaikh Amir Hussain, founder of Evensteer.
Every mentoring program needs a reason that fits on one line. Leadership will ask for it at the first budget talk, so write it down first.
Retention is a good first goal, and one study shows why. At Sun Microsystems (Knowledge at Wharton, 2007), 72% of mentees and 69% of mentors stayed at the company. Of staff outside the program, 49% stayed.
Retention isn’t the only good goal. You might want new hires up to speed sooner, or more people ready to lead a team, a leadership development goal. Pick one. Then write down how you’ll know it worked, before you match a single pair.
A goal with no measure ends up as a survey. A goal with a measure gives leadership a reason to keep funding it.
Start with a group you can run well. A pilot with one team or one level is easier to fix than a launch to the whole company. If it works, it’ll sell the next cohort for you.
Size matters because of the admin, not the people. Once a program grows past 50 people, running it by hand gets hard. One program manager, matching mentors in a spreadsheet, put it plainly: “I can’t manage this if it grows beyond 50 people. I’m already stretched thin… How can I work smarter, not harder?” (quoted in Together Platform’s spreadsheets-vs-software analysis).
Before you invite anyone, settle these:
Write the rules first, then match. If you match first, the rules bend to fit the pairs you’ve already made, and people can tell.
Good rules are short. Match on the mentee’s goal, the mentor’s skills, and how far apart the two sit in the company. Then add the rules you won’t bend:
Together Platform’s analysis also found that matching mentors to mentees by hand takes about ten minutes a pair. Mentorship matching software can suggest pairs faster, but it still needs your rules first. Tell each person why you paired them. People give a match a real try when the reason makes sense. Want to hand this part off? See matching, run on your criteria, and conflict checks and re-matching.
People say yes to mentoring because they want to help. That doesn’t mean they know how. A first session with no plan can easily be the last.
Before anyone meets, give every mentor three things:
Keep the training short. A clear page and a quick call beat a long manual nobody reads. Brief mentees too, so they don’t arrive without a goal. Short on time? Mentor onboarding is a part we can run for you.
Pick how often pairs meet, and book the first few dates on day one. A rhythm in the calendar survives a busy month. A rhythm in good intentions doesn’t.
Then track one thing above all: did the pair meet? A log that takes seconds gets filled in. A long form gets skipped, and then you’re working from bad data.
The point is to spot quiet pairs early. A pair that stops meeting rarely says so, and by the end-of-cycle survey it’s too late to help. Look in the first weeks and send a short, kind note. If the fit’s wrong, offer a new match. Nobody should feel they failed. That’s the job of session tracking and early flags.
A satisfaction score tells leadership that people liked the program. It doesn’t tell them what the program did.
Report against your goal from Step 1. Show who took part and which pairs kept meeting. Show what each pair set out to do, and whether they did it. Then put that next to numbers leadership already watches, like who stayed and who moved up.
The wider case for mentoring is made (more on our problems page). At Sun Microsystems, 72% of mentees and 69% of mentors stayed, against 49% of staff outside the program (Knowledge at Wharton, 2007). Your CFO doesn’t doubt mentoring. They want proof it worked in your company. We can build that too: reporting leadership can act on.
The format should follow the goal. Here are four common formats, and when each one fits.
Any of these can run online. Remote pairs need the same rules, plus a set time and a video link in every invite.
98% of Fortune 500 companies offer mentoring programs (MentorcliQ, 2024). Whatever your size, these habits keep a program going after launch:
None of these habits gets harder as the program grows. The admin behind them does.
You now know how to run a mentoring program. The hard part is finding the hours. If your program’s small and one person has real time for it, run it yourself. You don’t need more than a shared document and a calendar.
Get help when the admin starts to crowd out the mentoring. You’ll feel it when matching, check-ins and reports pile up faster than one person can clear them. Together Platform’s analysis puts that point past 50 people.
That’s the part Evensteer runs. Our mentoring software suggests pairs on your criteria and checks reporting lines. AI drafts the check-ins and reports. A specialist reviews every match and every draft. Your team approves each one before it reaches your people, and it ships under your name. AI never decides who gets paired, or what gets sent.
Tell us about your program and one person replies within one working day. After a call, you get a written scope with a fixed price within 48 hours.
Start with one goal leadership cares about, then match pairs on clear criteria, set a meeting rhythm, and track what happens. Retention is a good first goal. In a Sun Microsystems study (Knowledge at Wharton, 2007), 72% of mentees and 69% of mentors stayed, against 49% of staff outside the program. Together Platform found that matching by hand takes about ten minutes a pair, and that running a program by hand gets hard past 50 people. Report outcomes, not satisfaction scores.
Mentoring programs at work usually take one of four forms: one-to-one, group, peer or reverse. One-to-one pairs a mentor with one mentee. Group mentoring gives one mentor a few mentees who share a goal. Peer mentoring pairs people at the same level. Reverse mentoring has a junior person teach a senior one. Pick the form that fits your goal, and add others later.
A successful mentoring program has one clear goal, simple matching rules, and someone who checks that pairs keep meeting. When programs stall, it’s usually the admin, not the people. Train mentors before they start. Reach out to quiet pairs early. Then report what each pair achieved against the goal, so leadership can see it working.