Most of us have experienced the quiet power of a mentor, someone who helps us see ourselves differently, challenges our thinking, or reminds us of what we’re capable of. But if you ask people just how effective mentoring is—and how they know—you’ll often be met by silence and blank looks.
A new report on workplace mentoring from the Association of Business Mentors (ABM), Unlocking Impact, highlights a clear tension: While 70% of businesses say that mentoring boosts performance and 98% would recommend it, 37% admit that they struggle to measure outcomes.
It’s one thing to feel that mentoring is beneficial for us. It’s quite another to know and be able to prove its efficacy. In the modern world, where every cost needs to be justified and to demonstrate a return, we need to shift our relationship with mentoring, moving it from a nice-to-have that feels good to an approach that provides a demonstrable business return.
Nearly half of respondents to the ABM survey (47%) cited a lack of time and availability as the biggest roadblock to implementing a workplace mentoring and coaching program. Limited resources weren’t far behind, with 38% of respondents stating that lack of resources was an issue. Without clear evidence of impact, mentoring risks being sidelined when the pressure is on and budgets tighten.
The Measurement Gap
The ABM report demonstrates that mentoring works, based on their survey of human resources and people directors from medium and large businesses across the UK, as well as conversations in focus groups they conducted with workplace mentors and coaches. However, participants did note challenges with measuring return on investment. Focus group participants stressed that mentoring needs to be embedded in the organization’s standard measures of performance and benchmarked accordingly.
We’re wired to value what we can count, and businesses clearly aim to demonstrate the impact they believe exists, but they often rely on basic metrics like participation rates or satisfaction surveys. The problem with such measures is that they tend to be short-term, reflecting the impact of mentoring only at the point of engagement, rather than connecting it to longer-term career progression, achievement of key performance indicators, and mentee retention.
Some of the important outcomes become visible only after the mentoring relationship has ended and, therefore, may lack a clear link to the mentoring..
Two of the three most popular metrics used by businesses to measure the effectiveness of their mentoring program—employee feedback and surveys (71%) and program completion rate (53%)—do not reflect the business priorities most likely to move senior leaders in the organization.
To eradicate this gap, the HR team and the business leaders need to draw up clear outcomes that the business will look for to justify investment in their mentoring program and create an impact map that links the goals to measurable indicators over a period of time that goes beyond the duration of a single program.
If someone has participated in a mentoring program for one year, it should be possible to benchmark their progress in areas like retention, promotions, and well-being against non-participants for at least three to five years.
From Numbers to Narratives
Of course, not all returns are tangible and measurable in simple numbers. Some of the most meaningful effects of mentoring resist neat measurement. Mentoring works because it changes how we see ourselves. Confidence, self-efficacy, and emotional resilience are all outcomes of being genuinely seen and supported—long before any shifts in key performance indicators.
Many people seek the support of mentors to help them boost their presence in meetings, gain more confidence when presenting or in taking the lead in key relationships, grow belief in their ability to deliver at a higher level, or simply explore different perspectives or solutions to challenges.
Many of such outcomes manifest in success in role or in progress within the company, but such quantifiable metrics need to be balanced with qualitative feedback to provide a full picture.
Capturing the stories of people’s gains can also provide a valuable resource to the organization as a whole. One common complaint when longstanding employees leave a company is that their accumulated wisdom and experience leave with them. Using simple tools like regular pulse surveys, case studies, and shared learning workshops can capture those stories and experiences, keep them within the business, and pass them on to the next generation.
Embedding a Mentoring ROI into the Culture
Insights about mentoring matter only when they shift how people think—when leaders start seeing mentoring not as a process but as a human relationship that fuels trust and growth. The quest for evidence of mentoring’s value should be part of all programs from the outset. True impact emerges when measurement isn’t an afterthought but a design principle.
There are some simple steps you can take within a mentoring program to ensure capture of as many of the positive outcomes as possible.
- Set clear objectives and success indicators before launching a mentoring relationship. Mentor and mentee should agree on what success will look like at certain intervals, such as after six months, one year, and three years.
- Create clear feedback surveys for mentors and mentees that go beyond simple satisfaction and participation metrics. Ensure a blend of questions that allow you to capture both quantitative and qualitative data. If appropriate, host discussion sessions for mentors and mentees on the same program to share, explore, and capture success stories.
- Use AI to analyze the data from the surveys, identify behavioral trends, and compare mentee performance to the rest of the organization.
The ABM concludes its report by recommending accreditation for workplace mentoring program, noting that such a move would promote consistency in standards across organizations. This is something they are actively working to develop.
The real challenge—and opportunity —is to value what’s invisible: the confidence, courage, and clarity that ripple long after the mentoring sessions end. If we can measure that, we’re measuring what truly matters.
