Explaining the Mentoring Program

Mentoring is partnering with a more experienced colleague to enhance knowledge, skills, and self-awareness in a certain area. This critical knowledge is often not captured in formal documentation but passed down in person.

Mentoring must be enabled, and permissions must be granted through the Admin Center. In addition to regular administrator permissions, mentoring admins and owners can specify users as administrators for individual mentoring programs through the mentoring program Settings.

Within Manage Mentoring Programs, you can utilize the program wizard to identify details, determine mentor and mentee groups, and set timelines for each program. Mentors and mentees match based on the specific program selected.

Three program options currently exist based on your organization's flexibility or structure level: Supervised, Unsupervised, or Open Enrollment.

Depending on the program selected, the wizard varies. With a Supervised program, program owners or administrators have the option to define the mentoring program details (i.e., program name and description, owner, dates, etc.), select the mentors and the mentees, define the criteria for the sign-up form, and review the summary. You may add translations or localization with the Globe icon. Supervised programs allow the administrator high structure and control over the program, timelines, and matching and require more interaction and management from the administrator.

Unsupervised mentoring programs allow the administrator more flexibility while maintaining some structure around the matching process. The wizard works similarly to the Supervised program, but Unsupervised programs do not require as much oversight.

Open Enrollment programs are the most flexible of the three, and there is no need to select mentors and mentees. By default, all employees will be invited to participate, but there will be an option to limit participation by selecting a target group. Also, this type of program is ongoing and has no defined start/end dates.

Questions within the Manage Mentoring Programs wizard allows the administrator to design and tailor questions related to each audience. The mentor questions can be different from the mentee questions to capture information unique to each audience. You may also designate key questions, allowing the administrator to require the questions to be answered.

Once a mentor program is launched, the mentor or mentee can join the program and designate preferences for pre-determined questions. Any questions marked as key questions by the administrator will show as required.

If the participant attempts to continue without answering, the system displays an alert stating: This question is required.

Mentoring Program administrators greatly benefit from increased flexibility in handling the matching questions or reacting to new needs coming up. They can edit, add, or delete questions, including their translations. When creating a Supervised program, administrators can edit the questions before any matching is started, allowing for more refining when designing a program. With Unsupervised and Open Enrollment programs, administrators can modify questions before the program ends.

When you add questions after a program is launched, the questions only apply to the participants who sign up for the program after the modifications. When you edit questions, the new version applies to all participants, including those who have signed up for the program and answered previous questions. The edited questions will be used for reporting. When questions are removed, all participants, previous or new, can no longer see the questions, but the answers from the previously signed-up participants are still reportable.

When managing the participation of mentors within a program, filter options in the Mentors tab allow administrators to review all pending requests by status and conveniently approve them from this area. The filters allow the administrator to see the Status of the following: Pending, Declined, Accepted (Available, Unavailable).