The Challenge
- Segment: Large enterprise
- Industry: Insurance brokerage
- Location: United States, with offices in many regions
- Programs: Early-career mentoring, plus separate mentoring programs for account operations, sales, corporate services and a specialist business unit
A national insurance brokerage wanted access to mentoring to depend less on where employees worked or whom they already knew. Informal mentoring went on in its offices, but some employees found much more support through local connections than others did. The talent team wanted a deliberate way to make development relationships available across the company.
Creating a space where everybody had access to mentoring was at the core of it.
Mentoring program manager
The early-career track gave that goal a practical focus. Every year, more than 200 graduates join a structured pathway of more than a year that prepares them for account management roles. Giving all of them a consistent development experience is a standing priority.
The need reached well beyond early talent. Employees in account operations, sales and corporate services needed conversations that fit their responsibilities. Even a shared topic like workload means different things in different jobs: meeting predictable finance deadlines, setting priorities as a leader, or coordinating work across departments.
Why Chronus
The brokerage uses Chronus to combine mentoring relationships with a shared framework for development. Connection plans give each pair a rhythm, and conversation guides, goal tracking and a mid-cycle review give both people material to work through together. The aim is a relationship that keeps going well after the first introduction.
When the team refreshed the program, it also answered a request mentors had already made. In mentor roundtables, participants asked for more materials, and the program manager saw Guided Conversations as the way to provide them.
Function-specific programs let the team organize both the participant pool and the conversation content around employees' work. One specialist business unit of roughly 600 people, most of them in account management and operations roles, does work distinct enough to warrant its own program. The design follows what people do, not only where they sit in the organization.
The Solution
A refreshed program with a steady rhythm
The team refreshed its existing mentoring program with a connection plan of about six months, a purpose assessment and enablement for mentors. More than 150 participants completed the purpose assessment ahead of a training workshop, and the training tied the assessment to the mentoring experience and the resources available to each pair.
Separate tracks for each function
Next came function-specific tracks, built through workshops, profile reviews, matching preferences and conversation content. The specialist business unit moved first, followed by account operations, sales and corporate services. All of these programs are now running, and sales participants are already using the conversation guides in their meetings.
Central ownership, regional reach
A central program owner works alongside HR partners in each region. Regional presentations and program communications explain how to take part and help recruit mentors. When the corporate program needed more mentors, the team paired regional awareness efforts with an invitation campaign sent from Chronus.
The Impact
The brokerage's reporting shows participants staying and mentors stepping forward:
- 85% retention among mentoring participants over a full year, against 83% among nonparticipants
- More than 80 corporate mentors within two days of an invitation campaign, up from about 45
- More than 750 people taking part in mentoring, with more mentors than mentees
The team is also studying what happens when early-career relationships last. Its own analysis of mentoring data follows associates who stay paired with a mentor for about three months, and compares them across successive classes on the career track.
If they stay paired with a mentor for that long, even class over class, we normally see more of the people in that group stay with us longer.
Mentoring program manager
Broad access, programs built around each function and focused mentor recruitment now work together, and the team continues to look at sustained mentoring in each new early-career class.
