Measurement and evaluation of mentoring

Summary

• Why evaluate your programme
• How to evaluate your programme
• When to evaluate
• Key lookouts

Evaluation is an essential component to bear in mind as you design and set your programme up for success. It will be important both to inform the broader business that your mentoring programme is delivering value and has met its agreed objectives, and to ensure real value is being delivered to your mentors and mentees. How you will evaluate your programme is something that is important to consider and plan from the very outset.

A good model for measurement is set out below and identifies a focus on both processes and outcomes and for these to be evaluated at both a relationship and programme level. Whatever specific objectives that are set for a programme e.g. retention, it will also be important to measure the impact on the individuals involved. By measuring all areas you should get a balanced view of what impact your programme is having. The matrix acts as a guide to help you structure appropriate questions.

Positive feedback from pairs involved, if shared, is something that is likely to encourage others to take up mentoring.

How to evaluate

There are various approaches to conducting your evaluation:

• Via an electronic survey tool which allows you to ask a controlled set of questions from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. This is a light touch way to gather some data to support your programme development.
• Facilitated focus groups – it is always good practice to get participants together again during the course of any mentoring programme. It provides momentum to the programme and relationships by reinforcing good practice approaches, supporting with any challenges, allowing for peer group learning and is another way for to gather feedback and evaluation on your programme. By gathering groups of mentors and mentees and asking a series of questions you are more likely to get more depth to the questions you asked in a simple electronic survey
• 1:1 phone conversations with participants via semi-structured interviews– by having informal, confidential conversations with participants you are able to get underneath questions and dig deeper for responses and understand more fully the reasons behind a response. This can be time consuming but this provides very rich data as the format allows for deeper exploration of issues on an individual basis

Other areas you can use are:

• Appraisal information
• Data from performance management systems
• Employee attitude surveys
• Exit interviews
• 360 feedback
• Employee retention rates

When to evaluate

It is then important to evaluate at both a formative and summative level. Gathering formative data and feedback early on in the programme gives the programme manager the opportunity to intervene and potentially to provide help at an earlier stage if relationships are struggling or if processes are identified as hampering success. It is then important to complete a summative evaluation at the closure of the programme

Evaluation can take place at various stages:

After initial training sessions – to review the quality of training. This is usually done via an end-of-session questionnaire which checks the learning achieved against the course objectives.

After 2-3 meetings – the mentoring pair should take a check at this stage and ask one another: ‘Is this going to work?’. If things are not going well at this point, then this is time to discontinue the relationship. It is great if the programme manager is able to make this check and offer support to any pairs that are struggling.

Regularly during the mentoring relationship – mentoring pairs need to review progress against their objectives and also how the relationship itself is progressing at a process level too.

4-6 months into the relationships or at the mid-point – this is good point to gather your formative data. Focus groups generally give a better feel for the situation, but questionnaires will be easier if you have a large number of pairs. The information gained from this can be usefully fed into any mid-point development/review sessions;

At the end of a programme, or annually if it is on-going – to evaluate the benefits of the programme to the individuals and the organisation, to keep close to continuing relationships, to flag any need for change in the programme as a whole.

Potential sources for your evaluation

Any participants and stakeholders in the programme can be asked to give feedback, including:

• mentors and mentees
• line managers
• peers/colleagues
• programme coordinator and administration staff
• programme sponsors
• steering group members
• HR, training and development staff
• external advisers

© David Clutterbuck, 2014

Prof David Clutterbuck
Coaching and Mentoring International Ltd
Woodlands, Tollgate,
Maidenhead,
Berks, UK. SL6 4LJ

www.coachingandmentoringinternational.org
e-mail: info@coachingandmentoringinternational.org
Company registration number : 08158710