The Challenge
- Segment: Large enterprise
- Industry: Entertainment
- Location: Global, with teams in many locations
- Programs: Year-round one-to-one career mentoring, in relationships of about six months
Employees at a global entertainment company wanted development connections beyond the colleagues they work with every day. Across a dispersed organization, mentoring could introduce people to experience and knowledge in other parts of the business. But access had to fit teams whose workloads rise and fall with production schedules.
The program ran as two fixed cohorts a year, each lasting about six months. A window could open just as someone's team hit its busiest stretch, and once matching closed, people kept asking to join. In one two-week stretch after a window closed, the program lead fielded around 20 late requests.
The company wanted employees to look for a mentor when they had the capacity, including when they joined the company or set a new development goal. It also wanted enough guidance to get relationships started while leaving participants room to shape conversations around their own goals.
Why Chronus
The company already ran its mentoring program in Chronus, and the platform's flexibility supported the change. Self-matching lets employees browse potential mentors, and profiles help them judge expertise and experience. The team refined what participants can see, including business titles and job families, to make finding a mentor more useful.
Reporting shows how far connections reach across the organization. In one dashboard review, more than four in ten connections crossed broad job-family groups, and about seven in ten crossed job families. The program lead used those findings to explain the program's reach to colleagues and leaders.
Campaign tools help the team reach prospective participants and see how they respond. One announcement was opened by about six in ten recipients. Survey response dates let the team keep a steady eye on participant feedback.
The Solution
From two enrollment windows to year-round
After months of refining matching settings, refreshing profiles and program pages, and reviewing participant resources, the company opened mentoring connections throughout the year. Relationships still run for about six months, but employees can start one at any point. The team updated resources and announcements to explain the change and remove references to fixed matching windows.
Since we went evergreen, it's been a pretty smooth program.
Mentoring program lead
Recognition at the finish
Completion certificates give participants a way to mark the work they put into mentoring. Participants began sharing their certificates on their professional networking profiles, and the program lead described the certificates as generating excitement.
Little day-to-day administration
An HR data feed keeps employee information current, and the team uses email and workplace chat to raise awareness. The program now sits with a learning and development manager who runs it alongside other responsibilities. A reporting session with Chronus helped the manager see where information lives and how to read it.
It's not a platform we need to be in every single day doing things, which is really helpful.
Learning and development manager
The Impact
Participants are active in their mentoring and positive about it:
- 92% survey satisfaction in one quarter
- More than 2,200 mentoring activities recorded in that same quarter
- Every meeting-feedback response in a later review, more than 180 in all, rated the meeting helpful
- About 9 in 10 of more than 150 survey respondents were likely or highly likely to recommend the program
Year-round access keeps connections forming without an enrollment window. In the first half of the following year, the program recorded more than 300 mentoring connections.
The retention gap is small but positive. In one program review, connected participants were about 2% more likely to stay with the company than employees who had not connected.
Mentoring helps colleagues spread across many locations build connections with each other.
It makes that world a much smaller place.
Learning and development manager
The one-to-one program is running well and continues to give participants positive experiences.
