The Challenge
- Segment: Large enterprise
- Industry: Manufacturing
- Location: Global
- Programs: Year-round, self-service one-to-one mentoring for salaried employees
At a global building materials manufacturer, development opportunities mostly reached the employees picked for leadership programs. When an employee survey asked about priorities, people said they wanted more development resources. Mentoring could give them access to colleagues' experience, but the existing approach depended on HR business partners to choose both the participants and their mentors.
That approach kept drawing on the same mentors, even when they were not the best fit for a particular employee. For the talent development team, wider access and better fit had to come together. Employees needed a way to find relevant support on their own, and HR business partners needed to carry less of the coordination.
Providing mentorship more broadly and deeply across the organization is still our guiding principle.
Mentoring program lead
Why Chronus
An open mentoring marketplace matched the self-service model the company wanted. Salaried employees across its businesses find mentors through profiles and use connection plans to shape their relationships. Because the program runs all year, employees can join when they are ready instead of waiting to be selected for a cohort.
The company also wanted to examine the program in detail. The program lead uses Chronus reporting to follow connections and activity, and an existing data feed links mentoring records with information on employee movement. That gives the team a practical starting point for evaluating mentoring alongside the company's other talent development offerings.
Chronus is great for reporting, and I really appreciate having all of that data at my fingertips.
Mentoring program lead
Mentoring also shows up where employees already manage their development. A return feed places each person's mentoring partner and connection plan details inside the company's talent management system.
The Solution
An open marketplace that runs all year
The program is built around one-to-one mentoring that never closes. Profiles help employees find a mentor whose experience fits what they want to learn, and the team deliberately kept the connection plan simple so pairs can focus on their conversations.
A check-in at about one month
About a month into each relationship, mentees get a short check-in. When a mentee reports being unhappy with the match, the program lead offers to help close the connection so they can look for another mentor. That gives the team a set moment to help an employee find a better fit.
Linking mentoring to development planning
The team is now exploring closer ties between mentoring and development planning. The company already maps current and future job roles to a set of capabilities, and the program lead wants to bring that existing information into mentor profiles rather than asking employees to enter it again. The proposed next step connects development goals, learning courses and colleagues who have the relevant capabilities.
The Impact
The company's program review shows employees in mentoring relationships staying and moving at higher rates than nonparticipants:
- 12% higher retention among employees connected in a mentoring relationship than among those who did not take part
- 27% greater likelihood of a job-band change among connected participants than among nonparticipants
- 93% of mentoring engagements cross job bands
- Close to 2,000 employees have taken part since launch, with more than 900 mentoring connections formed
Activity and feedback add to the picture. In just over four months of one year, employees scheduled more than 180 meetings in Chronus. In the first weeks after meeting feedback was switched on, every response, about 30 in all, rated the meeting helpful.
The program has done what it set out to do.
We wanted to make mentoring available more deeply and broadly in the organization and take a lot of the administrative burden off HR business partners. That has certainly been achieved.
Mentoring program lead
The next phase builds on the open marketplace: making mentoring a more explicit part of each employee's learning and development journey.
