Creating a mentorship program is just one piece of the puzzle. Once you have a mentorship program or pilot in place, you need to ensure it remains effective and delivers long-term value. In many cases, that means scaling it to better meet the needs of your employees and your organization. 

In this article, we’ll explore some of the signs that it’s time to grow your mentorship program, common challenges you might encounter, and the steps you can take to successfully scale your program and drive ROI.

Signs it’s time to scale your mentorship program

Most mentorship initiatives begin with the best intentions—to foster growth, boost engagement, and drive value for both employees and the business. However, even the most well-meaning programs can hit a plateau. If they aren't able to scale effectively, those initial efforts may see diminishing returns.

Here are some indicators that your mentoring initiatives might be ready for an upgrade:

1. Limited program reach

Is your program only reaching a small segment of your workforce? Most mentoring programs start with select target groups, confined to a specific department or accessible only to certain roles and levels. But while every additional employee provided with a mentorship opportunity stands to benefit from the experience, your impact is limited when you have just one program with a small cohort. If you're noticing that only a small percentage of your workforce is able to benefit from mentoring, it's a clear sign that it's time to expand your program's reach.

2. Long waitlists

Having a long list of employees interested in joining your mentorship program is a good sign—but only for a limited time as you prepare your program to scale. Making employees wait for extended periods for mentorship opportunities can negatively impact your program outcomes, leaving valuable employees without the support and development they’re looking for. If you’re consistently turning away interested employees, it’s time to consider scaling your program to accommodate demand.

3. Overburdened program admins

Expanding your mentorship program to address limited reach and long waitlists is essential, but it can also lead to a new set of challenges. Without the right infrastructure and support, your program admins can quickly become overwhelmed—ultimately limiting the value that your initiative can have on your employees and the business. 

If you notice that your program admins are drowning in spreadsheets and manual tasks and the participant experience is suffering, it's a clear sign that you need to streamline the process and leverage technology to scale efficiently.

4. Good pilot results (qualitative and quantitative)

Pilot programs or test programs make it possible to test new initiatives, like mentorship, in a lower-risk, lower-effort setting. 

When you get good initial results, it’s usually a signal that there’s value in implementing a full-scale program—whether that’s good qualitative feedback from pilot program participants or a positive shift in key business metrics.

It’s worth remembering that the benefits of a mentorship program can often take time to translate into business outcomes. So while mentoring can drive business metrics like performance or revenue, focusing too much on those metrics during short-term pilots can also cause you to miss the leading indicators that can signal long-term success. Looking at program engagement, participation, and satisfaction can help you make those quantitative, data-driven decisions early on.

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

Why mentorship programs fail to scale for success

In theory, growing a mentorship program sounds simple. All you need to do is match more junior employees with those who have more experience, right? Well, not exactly. 

Sure, pairing any employees together for learning and development (L&D) can technically qualify as mentorship. But implementing a mentorship program that scales and drives results requires a bit more care and consideration. And there are some common threads we see across mentorship programs that hold companies back from successfully expanding a workplace mentorship program.

Basic mentor-mentee matching

There’s a difference between creating a mentor-mentee match versus creating the right mentor-mentee match.

It’s not that everyone doesn’t have valuable learnings to share. But when we think about mentorship in the context of employee and organizational objectives, it needs to be more focused and intentional to maximize employee development opportunities.

This can be tricky to accomplish when you’re manually matching mentors and mentees in a spreadsheet. It’s not only difficult to scale beyond a couple dozen matches, but it also makes it near impossible to connect the right people based on key factors, such as individual goals, skills, and experience.

Manual mentor-mentee matching can also be subject to bias throughout the process, which can disproportionately disadvantage certain employees and demographics. 

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

Single use case that doesn’t appeal to everyone 

Mentoring shouldn’t look exactly the same for every employee. In fact, the value of mentorship is that it carves out unique learning journeys for different talent groups.

We often see mentorship targeted only toward those in early to mid-career roles.

These very specific use cases, while prime opportunities for mentorship, make mentoring less appealing to anyone who doesn’t fall into those categories (people managers, leaders, or more senior employees). This makes it difficult to expand and can also make it challenging to get mentors on board if the value isn’t explicit for them as well. 

One format that gets stale 

In a similar vein, we often get caught up in the traditional delivery of mentorship: a one-way street that focuses solely on providing the mentee with guidance and support. 

The traditional, top-down 1:1 mentoring format should certainly be part of the experience but it shouldn’t be the only way mentoring is executed in the workplace. By excluding more broad mentoring formats, such as group mentoring, peer mentoring, or even group learning, you miss opportunities to strategically connect and elevate your team. 

‍Mentoring experiences and formats should be fluid to meet the ever-evolving needs and expectations of your employees and your business. 

"What I love about 10KC is the combination of Mentoring, Networking and Group Learning Sessions. This unique and multi-faceted approach really works to reinforce the skills and mindsets while also creating opportunities for connection and belonging” - Catherine Brown, Director, Leadership Programs, Netflix & Founder, Taybridge Leadership

Lack of mentors or participants

A mentoring program can’t exist without mentors and mentees, and a program can’t grow without enough buy-in from employees.

There are a few different reasons that programs can struggle to fill their mentor or mentee spots, including:

• Lack of value or poor communication around the benefits for mentors and mentees
• Not enough interest or program marketing to generate participant excitement 
• Poor buy-in and limited participation from senior leadership
• Not enough use cases for employees to derive value for their professional goals
• Poor company culture around learning and development

No support for participants

Just pairing employees isn't enough. You need to set them up for success to ensure that they have useful conversations that further their goals and the goals of the program.

If mentors and mentees don’t know what to talk about or understand the best practices to reach their goals, your program is either going to be extremely inefficient or completely ineffective. 

Mentors, even though they have experience in their field, aren’t always automatically good mentors. And mentees often don’t know how to be good mentees themselves. Without training, structured curriculums, and guidance, participants are left to fend for themselves and are far less likely to reach their goals.

“Most organizations just rely on everyone to be a naturally amazing mentor or sponsor. Stop making people have to be naturally gifted at sponsorship and mentoring. That's where platforms like 10KC provide them with the conversation guides, the nudges, all of those experiences so that you can now 10x or 20x the amount of people that are ready to do this because they're enabled. We would never make every manager write and administer their own training for things like anti-bias or anything else. There's curriculums that are built and those are delivered, and it's the same thing with sponsorship and mentoring.” - Dave Wilkin, Cofounder, 10KC

Heavy admin lift

Time and resources are precious commodities in any organization. Yet, many companies inadvertently create a significant drain on both by opting for manual mentorship programs to minimize upfront costs. This means every aspect of the program, from matching and communication to follow-ups and content creation, is handled manually.

While this approach might seem budget-friendly initially (to save on software costs), it quickly translates into an overwhelming administrative burden for program managers and HR teams—resulting in increased cost for additional headcount or hidden cost in the form of lost productivity and potential.

Instead of focusing on strategic tasks like tracking progress, measuring impact, and optimizing the program for maximum ROI, mentorship program managers find themselves bogged down in spreadsheets and endless manual tasks in addition to other responsibilities.

This inefficiency extends to participants as well. Manually scheduling sessions, searching for resources, and navigating the program creates friction and frustration. When the time commitment outweighs the perceived value, program completion and engagement rates plummet.

“I’m conscious of the bandwidth of my peers. I'm conscious of my own bandwidth. Having done the pilot, I took the post pilot data, which again was overwhelmingly positive. There was a big appetite for this program. I coupled that with our existing attrition of 32% with the fact that I could express, hey, this program right now manually will take X number of hours to run, which would then take away from my capacity to do other high priority DEI initiatives. We need this program, but we also need to invest in a tool that will make this program even more successful and easier to maintain and scale.” - Michelle Rojas, Associate Director of DEI, Spring Health

Lack of strategic alignment and impact 

Mentoring programs are often put in a corner and treated as a separate piece of the organizational growth puzzle. But in reality, it can—and should—be a strategic lever that drives impact across the entire employee lifecycle and business.

The problem is that admins often zero in on program-level participation, basic KPIs, and individual employee outcomes—failing to tie them back to larger talent and business metrics. 

It’s not to say that those leading metrics aren’t valuable. They are. But because executive buy-in and budget are often tied to overarching organizational objectives, you need to zoom out to the big picture and position mentorship as a vehicle for driving business-critical goals. 

💡 READ MORE: Building a Connected Workplace: The Role of Strategy and Data

Limited (or the wrong) technology 

In the modern workplace, organizations that fail to adopt the right technology are likely to get left behind. 

In the worst-case scenario, companies turn to non-mentoring talent development tools to attempt to string together a mentoring solution. While these tools may be excellent for certain HR priorities and initiatives, they often lack the development resources, experience, and networking tools that allow mentors and mentees to actually feel connected and reach their goals. 

When evaluating platforms to scale your program, focus on these attributes:

• Centralization: Provide cohesive and strategic frameworks for all mentoring program activities.
• Multiple formats: Offer a variety of mentoring formats and experiences beyond traditional 1:1 pairings.
• Smart-matching: Employ AI and data-driven algorithms to create effective mentor-mentee pairings
• Reporting: Track, analyze, and monitor program effectiveness to demonstrate ROI.
• Resources: Curriculums and discussion guides should encourage knowledge sharing and maximizing learning outcomes.
• Structure: Build personalized mentoring and social learning experiences that target specific individual and business needs.
• Integrations: Integrate with key business platforms, embedding mentorship into existing workflows and increasing accessibility.

8 steps to scale your mentoring program 

Growing a highly-impactful mentoring program needs to be done intentionally, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. We’ve rounded up some steps and best practices for seamlessly and effectively scaling your organization’s mentorship program.

‍The first few steps are designed to help lay a larger and stronger foundation for your expanded mentoring program.

1. Align with strategic objectives

Just like any new business initiative, the process of scaling your mentoring program should start with defining a clear purpose—the ‘why’. While we often focus on individual development, mentoring should expand into larger organizational goals. For example, are you looking to: For example, are you looking to:

• Develop early talent? 
• Improve employee retention?
• Support leadership development?
• Increase people manager effectiveness? 
• Boost employee engagement?
• Foster a more inclusive culture?

Rapid growth and expansion of any program can make it easy to lose sight of your goals. Understanding and clearly articulating your business challenges and desired outcomes will help keep your efforts on track.

Just make sure you also connect them to KPIs and set measurable goals you can use to track program success.

💡 READ MORE: How to Improve Your Corporate Mentorship Program: Strategies for Lasting Impact

2. Build your business case 

Growing a mentoring program takes time and resources. While the benefits and impact of mentoring are clear, you need to be able to tie them to your organization’s strategic objectives. 

Now that you know the leading and lagging needles you’re trying to move, you need to relate the benefits of mentoring back to those outcomes. You can do this by looking back at the qualitative and quantitative results of an existing mentoring initiative or pilot program or the overall advantages of mentorship in the workplace.

3. Get buy-in and budget

Securing stakeholder support becomes much easier when you’ve clearly identified the outcomes and ROI of a mentoring program. Leadership often understands the value of mentorship for individual employees but it’s not always clearly tied to business priorities.

But it’s not just getting executives and leadership on board, you also need to demonstrate the value of the additional resources or technology you need to scale your program in a meaningful way.

‍Once you have the foundation in place, you can start working on designing your new and improved program.

4. Identify participants and use cases

We know that single use case mentorship programs can hinder program growth and scalability. The goal should be to support employees at every stage of their journey with programs that meet their unique development and career needs. 

While every mentoring experience will look unique, you can set employees up for success with pathways and programs that guide them in the right direction. Common examples include:

• Early talent mentorship programs: Give recent grads the connections they need to feel supported in their transition into the workplace while helping them build the professional communication, goal setting, and career planning skills to be successful long-term.

• Mid-career mentorship programs: Empower employees with the tools and networks they need to navigate their professional careers, such as understanding potential career lattices and identifying (and closing) skills gaps while building your team’s bench strength.

• People manager mentorship programs: Boost overall team performance by helping people managers lead and coach their teams more effectively by connecting them with peers and experienced managers.

• Leadership mentorship programs: Create a bench of high-performing leaders with the skills, relationships, and business acumen they need to drive career mobility and fill future leadership roles

Pre-program surveys can also help you identify employee needs, interests, and goals to match employees with the right pathways and the right mentors while factoring in the needs of the business. 

5. Create matching criteria and algorithm 

Go beyond random mentor-mentee matches to make the most of every relationship. Effective mentorship hinges on trust and teamwork between all parties. So in order to create meaningful relationships, you need to consider various traits of each participant, including: 

• Team and level
• Talent segments (e.g. high potential, successor)
• Location and timezone 
• Skills and experience 
• Interests and career goals

This can be difficult to accomplish when manually matching participants, especially at scale. Using technology like 10KC’s Smart-Matching algorithm, you can leverage the data in your HRIS system to create strategic matches based on their development needs, career aspirations, and shared interests with just the click of a button.

6. Utilize multi-format learning

We know that traditional 1:1 mentoring relationships are only one facet of a holistic mentorship and development experience.

Rather than focusing on point solutions, consider learning pathways that are made up of flexible experiences and learning opportunities aligned with personal goals while working toward organizational objectives. 

Additionally, this allows employees to take advantage of different group learning and networking opportunities while encouraging them to engage in mentorship in the way that works best for them. 

📌 Multi-format learning should also trickle down into the resources you provide to elevate the mentorship experience. Having a mix of conversation starters, guides, and expert-led content can accelerate the right skills development and keep mentoring experiences focused on the outcomes that matter the most to your business.

7. Develop a communication plan 

Even if you have a waitlist of employees looking to join your program, there’s still a level of internal communication involved with successfully expanding mentoring initiatives. Who’s eligible for the program? What are the benefits for mentors and mentees? What are the requirements to participate? 

Engaging in communication campaigns can help get employees excited and increase program participation. Once you’ve scaled your program, regular communication will help keep participants informed and engaged. 

‍Finally, it’s time to measure ROI and celebrate your accomplishments.

8. Measure, celebrate, and iterate 

In many ways, growing the program is just the first step. You need to be able to measure and maintain performance and business impact so your mentoring initiatives can continue to grow and succeed. 

Surveys throughout the program can help identify opportunities for continuous improvement. They can also help you find opportunities to leverage mentorship internally in different capacities and across different departments, locations, and levels within the company. 

But of course, it’s important to take a moment to celebrate. We can say with confidence that scaling a successful mentoring program is no easy feat—it’s why we’ve built 10KC. The qualitative and quantitative wins deserve a moment to shine. By celebrating and sharing the value of your mentoring efforts far and wide, you can build momentum and maintain buy-in and budget.

💡 READ MORE: How to Use Mentor Surveys to Show Mentorship Program ROI

Ready to leverage mentorship software to scale your program? 

You can’t grow a mentoring program without the right tools in your corner. 10KC was built with all the features needed to help your team implement and expand mentorship programs at scale, including:

• Automated smart matching: Increase match quality and create strategic connections that boost performance based on up-to-date skills, goals, and interests.

• Software that scales with your program: Connect mentors and mentees with the right content and experience at any time by automatically matching pathways to specific talent groups.  Add pathways to new talent groups in just a few minutes and adapt to your organization's growth and evolving needs with curated, off-the-shelf content based on your talent priorities. 

• Robust reporting capabilities: Measure the value of every interaction and tie them back to your goals—all in one easy-to-view dashboard—so you can demonstrate ROI in real time.

• Seamless integrations with your existing tech stack: Make launching and managing your program a breeze with integrations with your HR tools and HRIS. Ensure employees never miss a mentoring or development opportunity with instant notifications and feedback in the collaboration tools they use every day.