An announcement from the Founders of Mentorly
This week, we launched Mentorly Enterprise, a solution designed to empower HR professionals, program managers, and community leaders to create impactful and scalable mentorship programs. Mentorly Enterprise has been flying under the radar for a few years, even while our enterprise clients have been loving it across North America, but now… our best-kept secret is out!
Creating a place for mentorship relationships to thrive has always been at the core of what we do, and Mentorly Enterprise allows us to expand that offering. It helps organizations better understand the success of their mentorship programs based on data and more importantly, it enables companies to provide a reliable mentorship offering that makes it easy for both mentors and mentees to get involved.
Why the switch?
The demand for mentorship in the workplace is undeniable, with 87% of millennial employees requesting it. Now that offices are partially remote or going fully digital, Mentorly Enterprise is even more necessary. Mentorship also improves retention and onboarding; the 2016 Millennial Deloitte survey found that “those intending to stay with their organization for more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor (68%) than not (32%).”
Mentorship is also key for attracting and retaining a diverse workforce. In a 2019 article titled, “The Key To Diversity And Inclusion Is Mentorship,” Dr. Elisee Joseph accredited his success to the “mentors he’s amassed along the way.” When asked what big mistake companies are making in their mentorship initiatives, Joseph’s answer was simple, they “fail to create a structured plan for success.”
For example, In 2018, a top tier American University approached us to optimize its mentorship program that was not properly structured or measured. Mentorship was held in person and as such, only local participants were involved. Mentorly transformed the university’s existing program by bringing it online, efficiently connecting students and alumni, wherever they may be. Much of the value of attending a university is building a network and getting to know the alumni from your school can lead to incredible opportunities. While students plan to learn from home in the upcoming 2020 school year, schools can now guarantee that their remote learners will develop meaningful relationships with alumni by using Mentorly Enterprise.
Why now?
In short – it’s time for mentorship to be reinvented. Though mentorship has been around for ages, it often takes a warm introduction to connect with a willing, available mentor. But here’s the thing, these introductions are designed to tap into people within your own network, which can be helpful, but it doesn’t always provide you with the varied expertise you may be looking for, in turn making it hard for people to make connections across industries, markets, and generations.
Since day one, Mentorly has disrupted the idea of traditional mentorship. Our digital mentorship sessions are intentional and structured, and take place via our integrated video conferencing system. Our approach shifts away from the idea that mentorship has to be based on a long term relationship with one mentor, instead of providing mentees with the opportunity to connect with multiple accessible mentors with varying expertise and mentoring styles. This way, as mentees evolve along their career path, they can connect with the mentors that most reflect their reality.
“What happens to the old Mentorly.co?”
Now there are two different offerings from Mentorly! Mentorly.co as you’ve known it for the past 3 years is now rebranded as Mentorly Marketplace! The same vibrant community just hosted at a new URL. Mentorly Marketplace remains open to the public for mentees from the creative, technology, and business sectors and each pays to hold a 30-minute or hour-long session with a vetted mentor.
Mentorly is stronger than ever with our recent launch of Mentorly Enterprise, which already supports people within schools, businesses, and large organizations. We provide custom private portals and seamless tools to provide quick and accessible, high-level mentorship without the headache of managing several services.
“Since mentorship is at the core of what we do, CMI’s partnership with Mentorly is a perfect fit. Our organization is afforded the freedom to focus entirely on the music entrepreneurs we serve while trusting Mentorly to provide the right environment with flexible service and highly-responsive support. Having launched with Mentorly just in advance of the COVID-19 outbreak, CMI was in a position to quickly shift our focus to online programs, generate new business and keep our employees working during the crisis.” — Vel Omazic, Co-Founder & Executive Director CMI
We look forward to serving more people around the globe with both of our solutions and to continuing to shape mentorship so that it is more inclusive, accessible, and structured in 2020 and beyond! 🚀
See you on the new and improved Mentorly.co,
Ashley + Katherine