At a glance
6% vs 11%
turnover among employees in mentoring against the wider workforce
95%
of career mentoring connections active over a recent two-month stretch
All 50+
meeting-feedback responses in an early review of career mentoring rated the meeting helpful
- Segment: Mid-size enterprise, property and casualty insurer with a national office network
- Industry: Property and casualty insurance
- Location: United States, with offices across the country
- Employees: About 3,500
- Programs: Role-based mentoring for people new to their jobs, career mentoring
The Challenge
At a U.S. property and casualty insurer, the right mentor was not always in the same office. A new claims professional needs an experienced colleague who has done the same job, not just whoever sits nearby. Someone exploring a career direction needs a relationship shaped around skills, competencies and goals. With offices across the country, a local mentor pool limited the guidance people could find.
The stakes were practical. The talent development team's priorities were to close skill gaps, support a learning culture and build connections. People moving into claims and customer-facing roles, including new team managers, needed that guidance once their initial training ended.
Growth added pressure. One program went from roughly 35 pairs in one cycle to more than 60 in a later one. More participants meant more people to prepare, more scheduling needs to understand and more mentoring happening virtually between offices. Administrators needed resources for that virtual mentoring, and feedback that showed how each program was going.
Why Chronus
The insurer already had an extensive learning library, so it uses Chronus to add the person: an experienced colleague anywhere in the office network, inside a structure built for each program.
- Mentors from any office. New employees can reach experienced colleagues across the network, not only the mentors in their own location.
- A structure for each program. Each program has its own step-by-step plan for pairs to follow and its own surveys.
- People keep the final say on matches. Administrators review matches, applying what they know about roles, divisions and individual goals alongside matching recommendations.
- Feedback built in. Meeting feedback and surveys show administrators how each program is going.
It's been nice with Chronus to be able to remove the physical barrier of needing mentors in a specific location.
Mentoring program administrator
The Solution
Role-based mentoring for people new to the job
New groups start through the year as each class finishes initial training, and each relationship lasts about six months with an experienced colleague in the same role. The administrator chose a plan with one section for each month of the relationship. Mentor and mentee can be in different offices, so much of the mentoring happens over video calls.
Career mentoring built around skills
The team separated career mentoring from role-based mentoring while keeping ongoing relationships and their history intact, reviewing profile questions, participant groups, communications and plans with Chronus. The program's focus has since sharpened around explicit skills and competencies, with profile questions about each employee's goals and reasons for joining. Working from Chronus templates, the career mentoring administrator added a survey to the plan pairs follow.
Simpler mentor re-enrollment
For a recent cycle, the team enrolled recertified returning mentors with one bulk upload that also filled in a profile field for each of them. Both administrators found the process easy once they had applied guidance from an earlier session.
The Impact
Employees in mentoring stay
- 6% vs 11% turnover among more than 500 people enrolled across the mentoring programs, against the wider workforce
People new to their roles value their mentors
- 85% of role-based participants engaged with the program over the past year
- 100% of role-based survey respondents would recommend the program
- 96% of role-based respondents were satisfied with the program and their mentoring partner
Pairs start quickly and stay active
- More than 8 in 10 people in a new career mentoring cycle recorded activity soon after it began, with more than 60 meetings booked
- 95% of career mentoring connections recorded activity over a recent two-month stretch
Feedback that shows how each program is going
- All 50+ meeting-feedback responses in an early review of career mentoring rated the meeting helpful
- More than 100 meeting-feedback responses and nearly 60 completed mentor surveys in a later review, for administrators to learn from
