How much does a business mentoring program cost?

Budgeting for a mentoring program shouldn’t be guesswork.

In this article, we break down what influences the cost of mentoring for large organisations and government departments from design and facilitation to program management and reporting.

You will learn how to align investment with outcomes and demonstrate clear ROI to your leadership team.

What needs to be in a successful mentoring program

These items are non-negotiables and without them you will end up with a sub-standard mentoring program. 

• Planning stage. Take the time to work out why you want a mentoring program and who you should target.
• Webinar or in-person forums to your workforce to get people interested in mentoring.
• Marketing material; posters, emails etc. If you dont advertise the program, no one will know about it.
• Application forms, different one for mentors and mentees. This needs to include certain questions that will help with match making.
• Match-making. Whatever process you run, make sure the mentee feels they have control of the process. Assigning arbitrarily is a sure fire way to have your program fail.
• Training. Provide both in-person and online training for the participants. Separate training for the mentees compared to the mentors. Repeat this as much as possible as not everyone gets it first time or forgets.
• Mandatory attendance at kick-off meeting and close-out ceremony. Try to encourage as many people to attend face to face.
• Guidance and processes to ensure the mentoring sessions work.
• 1 to 1 coaching call with the mentoring pairs around goals. Challenge the mentee to come up with goals for the program in a coaching environment helps give both the mentee and mentor clarity on what needs to be achieved.
• Feedback sessions at the start, middle and end of the program.
• On-going management and regular catch ups with the participants. Small messages via Teams helps identify any issues that need resolving.
• Mid-session catch-up for the mentees (as one group) and the mentors (as one group). Encourage group 
• Don't get too involved or put up boundaries. Its two adults going on a journey that will be unique to them. Let them do that.
• Mentor certification. The mentor does this because they want to do it, not because they are forced to do it. Reward them with something (we provide mentor certificates).

All NLM programs have this as standard. That is why we guarantee are programs will be a success.

What variables can alter the price of a program?

There are a few variables that could alter the price. We will address these below.

1 - Number of participants.

The larger your group, the more time it will take to run the program. There also comes a point where an individual program becomes too big and it loses that personal touch. This is roughly around 30 mentoring pairs. If you want to go bigger, you should consider running two separate programs.

2 - Duration of the program

Of course a 6 month program will cost a bit less than a 10 month program. But most of the costs are the same regarding the duration, so the costs are negligible (i.e. maximum 10% difference).

Please note: If you are running a pilot, we recommend 6 months to get faster results.

3 - Location of the program.

Next Level Mentoring is located in Adelaide, South Australia.

If your company is in Adelaide then there are no costs for attending any in-person meetings. These are included in our standard mentoring program costs.

If you are not located in Adelaide, NLM will use video meetings to run the sessions.

Based on experience we do recommend that a NLM facilitator attends the kick-off, mid-session and close-out ceremony in person. If you are not in Adelaide and would like NLM to attend some or all of these sessions, then there will be additional travel costs.

4 - Location of the participants.

If your participants are in various locations around the country or the world, then you have time zones and travel to contend with.

This may require running multiple sessions to ensure everyone is getting the same training and information. Consistency is crucial for a good mentoring program. 

The use of video calls does help connect people who cannot attend the in-person events. NLM does not see a noticeable difference between in-person and virtual attendance.

We also provide online training for our mentoring programs which can be done anywhere. This allows your program participants to get access to all our training and guidance regardless of time-zones or location. We track and follow up with each participant to ensure they have completed the training.

5 - Mentoring matching process

 There are many ways you can match your mentoring pairs.

NLM recommends that the process is mentee-led. In this case, the mentee receives 4 mentors that match their desires. They then rank them in order of preference.

It is the simplest and most effective means for matching your mentoring pairs.

NLM’s matchmaking tool is based on this process and is included in the costs of our standard mentoring program.

Other options you can consider are:  

1.    The company does the matching based on the mentee’s desires and the company's judgement.

2.    The program runs a speed-matching process where the mentee meets several mentors. They then decide their favourite.

3.    The mentee gets access to all mentors. They then choose which one they want (normally on a first-come, first-served basis)

Option 1 requires more time as you need to ensure each mentee only has one mentor. You spend significant time matching and re-matching until you think you have got it right. The greater the number of participants, the longer the process takes due to the increase in permeations. We do not recommend this option.

Option 2 requires almost all participants to attend so will only be suitable for small programs where you can guarantee attendance. However, it is a lot of fun and is a guaranteed way to inject energy into the kick-off.

Option 3 will require mentoring software to ensure the mentees have access to the mentor’s profiles and can perform real-time selection. If you decide to have a company-wide mentoring program i.e over 100 people, where mentors and mentees can sign up at any time and be matched at any point, then this would be the best option.

6 - Coaching session on goals

Based on feedback from participants, one of the best things about a NLM mentoring program was the goals coaching session. Without it, participants felt they did really know what they wanted to get out of the program.

Its been so successful, that we now include it in all our mentoring programs as standard.

You could remove this element, but it will make it harder for all pairings to get maximum benefit from the program.

7 – Facilities

Do you have the facilities to comfortably host a 30-participant mentoring program?

Would you prefer to run the sessions offsite to increase the prestige or credibility of the program?

Where you host the various sessions for your mentoring program will affect the cost of your program.

This variable is down to your personal choice and budget as the delivered content & learnings are the same regardless. You know your people and what they would expect from a program like this.

Our standard mentoring program pricing assumes our clients are responsible for organising the various event locations.

Want to know more about our mentoring programs?

Then please click here to visit our main page where you can arrange a strategy call with us.