A quick Google search will tell you that corporate mentorship programs are a key piece of any successful talent strategy. (In fact, we might have a few articles on this topic ourselves.)

But the reality is: simply having any mentorship program isn't enough to deliver the talent outcomes needed to secure ongoing commitment and investment. You need to set strategic, realistic, and impactful program goals that ladder up to the talent objectives your stakeholders, leadership, and employees truly value. 

Don't settle for "nice-to-have" initiatives that can be deprioritized at any moment. Mentorship has the capacity to ignite amazing, tangible change across your organization. So, let's dive into a toolkit to help you define mentorship program goals that make a real difference in your talent strategy.

You need to strategically align mentorship program goals with the talent outcomes stakeholders care about

It's a common story: companies tout their mentorship programs, yet they're often perceived as "nice-to-have" initiatives, detached from core business objectives. This disconnect stems from a fundamental oversight: failing to strategically align mentorship goals with the outcomes that truly matter to stakeholders.

It's time to challenge that status quo. To truly unlock the potential of mentorship, you’ve got to shift the focus towards tangible outcomes that stakeholders value most. While profits and revenue remain paramount, savvy leaders recognize that people drive those results. Initiatives that cultivate engagement, development, and collaboration are essential for retaining top talent and impacting the bottom line.

Strategic mentorship, when aligned with these talent goals, becomes a powerful tool for achieving stakeholder objectives. By demonstrating how it can directly contribute to the outcomes stakeholders care about, you can secure buy-in and ensure resources are invested in impactful initiatives. Instead of treating mentorship as a side project, you must position it as a strategic driver of organizational success. 

💬 “You’re going to need to show what the target outcomes are, what metrics you're going to be driving, what that ROI could look like. And those target outcomes have to be valuable to your stakeholders, to the leaders who are going to be carving out a piece of their budget to invest in your program, to employees who you want to take part in the program.” - Christine Silva, Talent Advisor, former leader at RBC, Catalyst, Shopify

By speaking the language of stakeholders and focusing on the goals they care about, you can elevate mentorship from a "feel-good" initiative to a critical component of the company's talent strategy.

Common mistakes to avoid when setting mentorship program goals

We suspect most mentorship program managers aren't skipping goal setting altogether. The more likely issue? You’re setting the wrong kind of goals.

Let’s take a look at some common mistakes we see organizations make when it comes to mentorship program goal setting.

1. Setting vague or overly broad goals that aren’t strategically aligned

Ambiguous goals are a recipe for ineffectiveness. When goals lack specificity, they become unactionable and difficult to measure, leaving room for misinterpretation and wasted effort.

If your mentorship program goals are so broad that it's impossible to definitively mark them as "complete," they're probably not focused enough to drive meaningful impact.

💬 “It goes back to what metrics your leaders care about. Your stakeholders and their metrics. I've really seen the most success when my programs are a way to achieve existing stated metrics, where  I'm an activation point for something that has already been decided is an organizational priority. So rather than trying to add in new KPIs or priorities, I'm showing that I'm part of how it's going to be achieved.” - Christine Silva, Talent Advisor, former leader at RBC, Catalyst, Shopify

2. Conflating  program activity with talent outcomes

A common trap that program managers fall into is confusing program activity (leading indicators) with overall talent outcomes (lagging indicators).

These include metrics like program adoption, participation, and completion. They surface quickly and are easy to measure, providing early indicators of success. However, they don't fully capture mentorship's true impact.

Program activity metrics, or "program health," reflect the effectiveness within the program itself. 

To uncover mentorship's invisible impact, you must connect these leading metrics to lagging indicators—the talent outcomes and business goals that stakeholders care about, such as employee retention, promotion, development, or performance.

💬 “There are all sorts of business outcomes that you might also want to be attaching to, in terms of those lagging indicators. Lagging indicators in the sense of, sometime after the program, did it have an impact on retention? You also want to be measuring leading indicators. Those things that ultimately predict that you're on the right track. It's pointing to that outcome you're ultimately trying to drive. That's where your ‘activity’ metrics come into place. And I don't want to downplay the need for those metrics, because you do need them. You just don't want to stop there.”  - Christine Silva, Talent Advisor, former leader at RBC, Catalyst, Shopify

‍📌 READ MORE: How to Measure the Business Impact of Corporate Mentorship Programs

3. Neglecting employee needs and data insights

Moving forward on initiatives and setting goals based on assumptions can be risky. Organizations need to ground their decisions in solid data, not just intuition.

To make the maximum impact, your program goals should be built around the largest opportunities for improvement. For instance, maybe rising attrition rates over the past two years indicate a clear need for your mentoring program to prioritize employee retention and loyalty.

However, data is only one piece of the puzzle. Employee feedback must also be a key driver in mentoring goals and decisions. Ignoring employee needs can result in disgruntled employees who feel unheard and undervalued. 

💬 “Start with listening to your team members, build solutions, pilot it, and then look for some of the best in class vendors out there, like 10KC, to help you scale it and sustain it. I think there's power in listening and power in taking action based upon what you've learned.” - Michelle Rojas, Associate Director of DEI, Spring Health

4 examples of impactful mentorship program goals 

To help you set the right goals for your mentorship program, we’ve rounded up some examples that you can use to guide your goal-setting process.

(Hint: “Having a mentorship program” isn’t one of them.)

1. Boosting employee retention

 Increase employee retention by X% for [early talent, leadership, etc.] within their first two years of employment.

With employee retention still ranking high on the list of talent priorities, mentorship can be used to address high turnover rates in the workplace.

High attrition, whether organization-wide or within specific talent segments, can be costly. This goal can be easily adapted to any talent segment, such as early talent, leadership, or high-potential employees.

Targeted mentoring allows you to deliver a program that meets the specific needs of that particular talent group. It also makes it easier to track the leading metrics, like adoption within that segment, that can indicate early signs of success.

2. Increasing promotion and internal mobility

Improve promotion rates by X% within one year after completion of the program. 

A strong internal talent pipeline is crucial for organizational agility and growth. Mentorship helps build this pipeline by enhancing employees' business acumen, understanding of decision-making, and organizational awareness, enabling them to identify and pursue diverse career opportunities and address skills gaps.

While this example focuses on vertical mobility (promotions), lateral moves can also apply. By tracking both vertical and lateral movement of program participants, your talent team can gain a comprehensive view of how the mentorship program contributes to internal mobility and overall employee development.

3. Improving employee engagement

Increase by X% the average score on employee engagement surveys for program participants in the areas of "connection to colleagues" and "sense of purpose" after six months in the program.

It’s no secret that employee engagement is closely tied to performance. Mentorship programs, in particular, can be used to foster a collaborative culture in the workplace—all of which boost employee connection and create a sense of purpose. 

But employee engagement can be quite broad, making it a bit trickier to nail down the right metrics and KPIs.

What makes this goal effective is that it indicates the specific questions in an employee engagement survey that you want to move the needle on. Connection and sense of purpose are a direct reflection of how employees understand organizational priorities and how they contribute to them. 

It empowers program managers to focus curricula and mentoring conversations on the areas that make the biggest impact—such as relationship building and creating channels for information sharing—in order to elevate those specific scores.

4. Elevating early talent development

Increase the summer student-to-full-time employment conversion rate for program participants within one year of graduation by X%.

Early talent often refers to a large cohort of employees, ranging from summer co-op students to new grads—all of whom can benefit from mentoring and networking to navigate their new company and the professional workforce. 

Mentorship elevates the initial experience for early talent, so they want to come back. It also provides them with the skills and competencies that make them deserving of a full-time offer post-graduation. 

Organizations invest in early talent programs to find high-potential talent and build loyalty from day one. This example highlights a specific area of opportunity for an organization—increasing the ROI of a summer student program. The rate of program participants who convert to full-time employment is a measurable outcome that can be directly attributed to mentoring efforts.

How to establish your mentorship program goals

Now that you have a few examples under your belt, here’s how you can identify and create your own mentorship program goals.

1. Understand the current data

The first step to setting the right goals for your mentorship program is understanding the current landscape. Where are the biggest areas of opportunity in your talent strategy? Which metrics need the most attention? Are there concerns within specific talent groups?

Taking the time to analyze existing talent metrics, like promotion rates and retention rates, can help you identify gaps so you can not only set the right goals but build a mentoring program that actually addresses them.

2. Gather insights from employees and company stakeholders

Employees often understand their needs best—making direct feedback another powerful source of insights. Using surveys, focus groups, interviews, or even existing channels like Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), you can gain a better understanding of their experiences, challenges, and suggestions. 

What are their pain points? What are they hoping to gain? What challenges do stakeholders see in the current talent pool or organizational culture? Then use those insights to set goals that address them. 

➡️ A great example of using employee feedback to guide decision-making and goal setting is Spring Health. With 3x higher attrition in diverse talent, they set up employee listening sessions and discovered a desire for a mentorship program that supported career development and belonging. So they set a goal to boost retention among diverse talent groups. 

The result? They were able to drop the attrition rates from 32% to 15%.

3. Pinpoint specific business challenges to address through mentorship 

Mentorship initiatives shouldn’t exist for the sake of it. Rather, they should be specifically designed to address challenges or areas of improvement within the business. 

And that starts with defining the weaknesses that can be closed through mentoring, so you can position your mentoring program to make an impact on those challenges.

Common business challenges that can be targeted through mentorship include:

• Lengthy time-to-performance among new hires.
• Poor leadership development and collaboration.
• Soft and hard skills gaps.
• Low employee engagement and connection.
• High rates of attrition among high-performing talent. 
• Ineffective institutional knowledge sharing
• Lack of diversity and inclusion within the organization.

4. Define the ideal outcomes you want to achieve 

Once you’ve identified your key challenges, you can define the ideal outcomes that you want to achieve through mentorship—AKA your goals.

We’ve all been told to set SMART goals at some point in our careers and the same principles apply to setting mentorship goals. Your goals should make it easy to attribute and demonstrate progress toward the challenges you identified earlier on.

5. Set personal goals for mentors and mentees, too

What makes mentorship so powerful as a talent initiative is that it advances both broader talent objectives and individual employee goals. Employees should have the opportunity to define their own development goals and be provided with opportunities to work toward them.

Of course, for a mentoring program to make the biggest impact, individual goals should also align with your broader talent goals. Conflicting priorities can impede progress for everyone involved.

Just as you regularly review leading and lagging metrics to advance your talent goals, it’s important to schedule regular check-ins and surveys for your employees. These structured opportunities encourage everyone to monitor progress, share achievements, and help identify areas of improvement.

The role of mentorship software in setting and tracking program goals

The ability to track the metrics that matter is often the limiting factor for organizations when it comes to setting effective mentorship goals. This causes program managers to default to low-impact program-health metrics, simply because they’re easier to manage.

But with central mentorship software—like 10KC—you can set, track, and validate goals to show exactly how mentorship moves the dial on key talent metrics, like employee retention, engagement, development, and mobility. 

10KC helps you reach your talent goals and demonstrate the impact of your mentoring program every step of the way by:

• Unlocking insights into the skills employees are developing across their mentoring experiences.

• Tracking employee connections and learning in real-time to understand engagement and participation.

• Gathering feedback from mentors and mentees to go beyond the numbers.

• Showing how your program moves the dial on talent metrics like engagement, retention, mobility, and development.

• Acting as a partner in success through implementation, best practices, and ongoing support.