At a Global Building Materials Manufacturer, Mentored Employees Are 27% More Likely to Change Job Band

At a glance

• Segment: Large global manufacturer, with salaried staff across several businesses
• Industry: Manufacturing
• Location: Global
• Programs: Year-round, self-service one-to-one mentoring for salaried employees

The Challenge

Development opportunities at the manufacturer mostly went to employees hand-picked for leadership programs. When an employee priority survey asked what people needed, the answer was more development resources.

Mentoring could have filled that gap, but it ran through HR business partners, who chose both the participants and their mentors. That model kept drawing on the same mentors, even when they were not the best fit for a particular employee. It also left the coordination of every relationship with HR business partners.

The talent development team needed wider access and better fit at the same time: a way for employees to find relevant support on their own, with less of the work landing on HR.

Why Chronus

The company replaced HR-selected mentoring with an open, year-round marketplace in Chronus because it fit the self-service model the company wanted.

• Wider reach without more HR work. Any salaried employee can find a mentor through profiles, and HR business partners no longer select each pair.
• No waiting to be chosen. The marketplace is open all year, so employees join when they are ready instead of waiting to be selected for a cohort.
• A program the team can examine in detail. Reporting, linked to the company's own employee data, lets the team evaluate mentoring alongside its other talent development offerings.
• Part of the existing talent system. Mentoring shows up where employees already manage their development.

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 Solution

Finding a mentor

Salaried employees across the businesses browse mentor profiles and request someone whose experience fits what they want to learn. The team kept the step-by-step plan each pair follows deliberately simple.

A check-in at 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 find another mentor. That gives the team a set moment to correct a poor fit.

Mentoring data that flows both ways

Program reporting follows connections and activity. An existing data feed links mentoring records with information on employee movement, giving the team a practical starting point for evaluating the program. A return feed places each person's mentoring partner and plan in the company's talent management system.

Next: tying mentoring to development planning

The company already maps current and future job roles to about 15 capabilities each. The program lead is exploring how to bring that information into mentor profiles rather than ask employees to enter it again, connecting development goals, learning courses and colleagues who have the relevant capabilities.

The Impact

Mentored employees move and stay

• 27% more likely to change job band than employees who did not take part
• 12% higher retention among employees connected in a mentoring relationship than among nonparticipants

Mentoring beyond the hand-picked few

• Nearly 2,000 employees have taken part since launch, with more than 900 mentoring connections formed
• 93% of mentoring relationships pair people from different job bands

Better fit, less HR coordination

Employees now find their own mentors instead of waiting for HR business partners to choose them, and mentees who report a poor fit at the one-month check-in can move on to another mentor. In the first weeks after meeting feedback was switched on, every response, about 30 in all, rated the meeting helpful.

Steady use

• More than 180 meetings scheduled in Chronus in just over four months