Mentoring is a concept as old as time. But even the most proven concepts need to adapt to stay relevant.

Too often, mentoring programs are dismissed as feel-good initiatives rather than the strategic levers they truly are. While mentorship certainly still has a place in the modern workplace, it’s clear that it needs to chart a new course in order to make a meaningful impact. 

So we’re redefining mentorship.

Instead of sticking with the status quo, we're breaking the mold at 10KC with a comprehensive approach to mentorship that goes beyond simply being "nice-to-have."  Our holistic approach impacts the entire employee lifecycle, driving engagement, development, mobility, retention. 

In this article, we’ll explore what it means to embrace the new way of mentoring and how you can transform your organization’s approach to talent development with a modern mentoring program. 

Why traditional mentoring is failing your organization 

Workplace mentoring programs promise a world of benefits for organizations —which is why the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies have one in place. Yet, they often fail to deliver. Which begs an important question: Why?

Traditional mentoring programs have leaned exclusively on individual development goals, rather than also aligning mentorship to broader talent and business goals. This narrow approach fails to serve organizations at scale. And it misses the mark when it comes to larger talent outcomes that are deemed business essential. 

“One of the biggest things with mentoring is you need to have a program, and by doing it at scale you get the benefit of not missing anyone.” - Manisha Burman, EVP and CHRO, CI Financial

When mentorship fails to deliver on broader organizational goals, it creates a false perception that mentoring is a fun “nice-to-have” that‘s solely implemented to make employees happy, without measurable proof. It gets deprioritized in favor of more strategic and outcome-generating organizational initiatives.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and a cycle that can only be broken by re-evaluating workplace mentoring as a whole and looking at mentorship through a different lens—one that drives impact for employees and the business. 

📌 READ MORE:  The Problem with Traditional Mentoring

Mentorship as a strategic lever 

Mentoring is too often relegated to a side project, treated as an afterthought to core business objectives. This fundamentally undermines its potential to drive meaningful organizational impact.

Instead, mentorship should be viewed as a strategic imperative, a powerful tool for achieving critical talent outcomes like employee development, mobility, and retention—not just a perk to boost employee morale. Here are a couple ways to get there: 

Driving impact across the entire employee lifecycle

Rather than relying on generic solutions that tend to disproportionately benefit more junior employees but do nothing for employees later in their career only target  employees at very specific milestones in their careers, mentoring should be used across the entire employee lifecycle to create a culture of continuous development. 

Stages in the employee lifecycle that can be bolstered by mentorship include:

• Early career development: Of course, the beginning of an employee's career is crucial for developing essential skills and building a strong foundation. Mentorship provides recent grads, interns, and early talent with the support and connections they need to thrive in their roles. It also helps them feel valued and integrated into the organization from day one.

• Ongoing career development: Employees at all levels continue to crave opportunities for growth and development. Mentorship empowers them to take ownership of their careers, providing access to diverse expertise, resources, and networks to achieve their long-term goals. Programs can be tailored to be for new hires, department-specific, or ERG focused. 

• Manager development: Effective managers are the backbone of high-performing teams. Mentorship provides new and emerging managers with the opportunity to learn from experienced leaders and peers, gain diverse perspectives, and practice their management skills in a safe and supportive environment. 

• Leadership development: Leaders also need opportunities to grow and develop. Mentorship provides a platform for both emerging and seasoned leaders to sharpen their skills, navigate change, and drive business success.

📌 READ MORE: The Impact of Mentorship Across the Employee Lifecycle

Aligning with broader business objectives

Mentorship programs can fuel talent outcomes and organizational growth at scale, boosting engagement, retention, productivity, performance, internal promotion / mobility, and even profitability. 

By strategically scaling mentorship programs to align with key business priorities, you create a clear roadmap and targeted mentoring strategies to achieve your desired talent outcomes, including: 

• Onboarding and integration: Mentors and peer networks  can help accelerate connections, time-to-performance, and culture integration, reducing new hire anxiety and turnover.

• Ongoing development and mobility: Mentoring can provide talent with guidance through challenges and transitions throughout their careers by boosting skills development and opening doors to advancement opportunities.

• Performance and productivity: Mentoring can improve employee performance, goal setting, and feedback mechanisms to create high-performing teams across the organization.

• Retention and engagement: Mentoring makes employee development and success a priority, creating a sense of belonging and satisfaction that elevates commitment to the organization.

When programs are built around the specific KPIs and metrics that matter to your stakeholders, you can demonstrate the true ROI of mentorship. Highlighting the holistic impact of your mentoring program elevates it to a strategic business priority and positions it as a key driver of your talent goals.

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

Mentoring redefined: a new approach with 10KC

10KC is stepping outside the traditional box of mentorship to redefine what mentorship means and looks like in the workplace. We’re turning workplace mentorship into a central hub for employee connection and empowering employees to learn the way they do best—from each other.  

Let’s look at a few ways we’re transforming traditional mentorship and reshaping how organizations approach relationship-based learning.

One-and done → Ongoing

Point-in-time solutions only target point-in-time challenges. While mentoring can make an impact at critical milestones in an employee's tenure, consistent and continuous mentoring ensures employees are supported at every stage of their careers. 

Single format → Multi-format

Mentorship programs need to expand beyond only  1:1 pairings and foster opportunities for employees to learn from a variety of peers. Limiting employees to a single mentor also limits opportunities for growth and development. Reframing mentorship as relationship-based learning allows employees the opportunity to connect with a wide range of peers in a variety of formats—from individual mentoring sessions to group networking.

One-size-fits all programs → Personalized pathways

Generic learning experiences should stay in the past.

The needs and learning styles of every employee are unique and the same flexibility is needed in mentorship for participants to thrive. The new way of mentorship skips the one-size-fits-all approach in favor of personalized pathways that cater to the different skills, goals, and knowledge employees need depending on their career stage. 

Disjointed conversations → Consistent experiences

One of the biggest challenges with traditional mentorship is the lack of consistency between employee experiences. While the organic nature of mentorship fuels unique individual opportunities, it makes it difficult to reach more specific talent goals. By taking a more hands-on approach, organizations can provide better resources and content to help create a more consistent experience across pairings—one that better supports key organizational priorities. 

Employee goals → Employee and talent  goals

When it comes to mentoring, it’s not one or the other. The personalized nature of mentorship makes it possible to do both. Modern mentoring programs put both talent and organizational goals on the table at the outset, ensuring that they both stay front and center throughout the program. 

Untracked programs → Measurable metrics and outcomes

In an increasingly data-driven world, going off of gut feelings and anecdotal feedback isn’t enough to put mentoring at the top of the priorities list. The modern approach to mentorship sets programs up for progress tracking from day one. It takes mentoring beyond surface-level participation metrics to dive into learning and skills development outcomes with the same precision we’ve come to expect from more formal learning programs.

Manual management → Scalable 

The modern workplace doesn’t have room for inefficient processes. And the reality is that the spreadsheets and manual management of traditional mentoring programs are exactly that: inefficient. A redefined version of mentoring means looking at ways to maximize impact and deliver mentorship at scale through the right technology and tried-and-true processes.

"Social learning is often done manually, which limits how many people you can reach. So if you're trying to run a mentoring program and you're trying to match people and you're doing it all out of excel spreadsheets, you're probably going to pick a pretty small audience that you're focused on, because that's all you'd have capacity to be able to do. When you're thinking about innovation and where to point it—where you're looking to do it more deliberately and at scale—don’t let the manual work constrain the impact you can have." -Christine Silva, 10KC Adviser & former leader at RBC, Catalyst, & Shopify

📌 READ MORE: How to Scale Mentoring Programs for the Modern Workplace

The keys to a modern mentoring program

While mentoring programs will  look different from organization to organization, there are a few key strategies that have consistently proven to maximize  impact.

Here are a few mentoring must-haves to better align your mentorship program with the needs of the modern workplace, your organizational goals, and your employees. 

1. Strategic matching

Connecting the right mentors and mentees is critical for creating the connections that make the biggest impact. Rather than simply pairing employees aimlessly in a spreadsheet, you should pair employees with relevant peers and experts based on factors such as seniority, role, skills, interests, and goals. 

Technology, like  10KCs Smart-Matching algorithm, makes it possible to create strategic matches at scale based on organizational context and criteria, so you can take your time back. You can also assess the value of every connection based on your program goals and ensure employees have the connections they need to thrive.

2. Mentorship programs aligned with specific use cases 

Mentoring programs are most effective when they provide targeted guidance and content tailored to the specific needs of different talent groups. This personalized approach directly supports your key talent goals, driving engagement, retention, mobility, and development. A generic program simply can't achieve the same results. For example: 

🌱 Early Talent Development: Structured mentorship programs to accelerate new employee growth and integration.

💪 Manager Effectiveness: Equip managers to lead effectively, build strong teams, and drive performance.

💼Leadership Development: Targeted mentorship programs to develop critical leadership competencies.

3. Diverse mentorship formats

The best mentoring programs include other types of mentoring experiences outside of the top-down 1:1 traditional mentoring relationships. This includes other types of 1:1 mentoring relationships, like peer mentoring. It also includes group mentoring and networking experiences that allow employees to expand their networks and connect with as many peers, leaders, and subject matter experts as possible. 

4. Content and curriculums

While mentorship has traditionally been considered informal, structured mentoring can be a better alternative.

Expert-backed content and curriculums help streamline resources and keep conversations focused on the knowledge and skills that make the biggest impact. Discussion guides can help foster meaningful connections and encourage mentors and mentees to dig deeper into the areas that matter most.

“1.0 of mentoring was just ‘we're going to meet for coffee every quarter.’ You only get so far, and the conversations stay quite superficial. And just because someone's an executive doesn't mean they’re a good mentor. And so putting much more parameters and guidance around it in terms of what are we going to focus on, how are we going to make the conversations really meaningful and relevant with real curriculum and discussion topics I think really helps.” - Manisha Burman, EVP and CHRO, CI Financial

5. Measurement 

The traditional execution of mentorship made it notoriously difficult to track. It makes proving ROI tricky and program optimization nearly impossible. Even where progress is being made toward larger talent goals, lack of tracking often makes that impact invisible. 

IInstead, set up mentorship for measurement from day one, so it can be tracked  with the same level of precision as other business imperatives. When you take mentoring out of HRIS modules and spreadsheets and into mentoring-specific software and data dashboards, you unlock insight into the connections being made, the quality of the connections, and the skills that are being developed. This way, you can stop underestimating the value of mentorship, demonstrate how your program drives tangible results, and secure continued investment.

“There's a lot of data at our fingertips with the 10KC platform, which is fantastic. We've been able to customize it to focus on those things that are really important to us as a business.” - Bryce Hackman, HR consultant for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Thomson Reuters 

6. Technology-enabled mentoring platforms

Mentoring doesn’t inherently need technology, but technology-enabled mentoring programs can do what manual programs can’t. From smart-matching to data-driven insights they make it possible to connect mentoring with the business outcomes you care about.

Even where program management could theoretically be managed manually, such as outreach and mentor matches, technology streamlines the process so you can implement more robust mentoring solutions at scale in just a few hours a month. Mentoring platforms like 10KC, make mentoring more flexible and personalized, to create truly engaging mentoring experiences.

“We're not seeking cookie cutter solutions. We need to leverage the platform and the technology, but we also have to leverage the insights that we have about our people in our organization and what we know needs to be done to maximize results. And you have all listened, partnered, and been patient with us. 10KC caught our eye with the technology and the capabilities. But you really gained our trust with how you've shown up with and for us at each step along the way.” - Latraviette Smith-Wilson, Chief Marketing and Equity Officer, Horizon Media

7. Integrations

Humans are creatures of habit, which means shaking up their workday is difficult to do and can impact productivity.

The best way to secure employee (and stakeholder) buy-in and participation is to make it easy. Integrations bring mentorship to the tools your team already uses every day. 

For instance, 10KC integrates with leading HRIS tools to streamline how program managers launch and manage mentoring programs. Meanwhile, messaging and communication integrations bring mentoring experiences directly to employees, so they don’t have to add another tool to their tech stack.

Give mentorship a facelift with 10KC

Put traditional mentorship in the past and embrace the new way of mentoring with 10KC. 10KC’s mentorship platform provides the tools and flexibility you need to build a holistic, modern mentoring program that fuels high-performing teams and accelerates your talent goals. 

From smart-marching algorithms to off-the-shelf pathways designed for performance, 10KC has helped leading companies like RBC, Nike, and BMO transform how they implement and manage mentorship programs at scale.