Using AI To Scale Mentorship For Your Employees

Having access to a mentor can boost employee retention

“CEO’s are scared of the uncertainty. Industries are being disrupted, market needs are changing and employees are leaving companies faster than ever before,” says Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn’s former head of HR.
 

The median job tenure for workers aged 20 to 24 is shorter than 16 months! A survey by Deloitte suggested that a combination of hiring costs and lost productivity added up to $121,000 per departing employee. Beyond the cost of turnover, how will you ever build IP and intelligence at your company if your people keep leaving soon after they’re onboarded?
 
To survive, your company must figure out effective ways to retain their talent, and for that, you need to understand why you lose your people. According to a study of 19,700 post-exit interviews, 89% of employers think their people leave for more money. Let me tell you that only 12% of employees actually leave for a raise, and the numerouno reason for their exit is, in fact, lack of career growth & learning.
 
For the first time ever, it's an employees' market, and the young want purpose, feedback, and mentorship. They want companies to invest in their career aspirations and self-discovery but people leaders don’t have big budgets to give a coach to everyone.
 
All along, you’ve had the solution and you didn’t even know it. You have untapped mentors at every seniority level at your company who will raise their hands to help someone. Giving your employees mentors at your company will not only help advance their careers and professional development, it will also help them see a clear path at your company and build deep relationships, which will increase retention.
 
While working at LinkedIn, I had started a mentoring initiative and I first hand experienced this. My challenges were matching the right mentors to the right mentees and enabling them to have effective conversations and follow through. The answer was artificial intelligence. I quit my job and started Nextplay.ai to solve this problem. Today, we help companies such as Splunk, Lyft, Square and Gilead.
 
As a SaaS application, our centralized AI software processes all employee input makes immediate mentorship recommendations and nudges mentors and mentees to have high-quality conversations. Over 90 percent of Ellen matches stay in contact beyond their first three mentor/mentee meetings, a remarkable success rate in the mentorship arena.
 
After six months of use, employees had 218% more clarity towards their career path and felt 178% more equipped to achieve their goals within their company. The numbers seem hard to resist when users estimate a 25 percent boost in employees recommending their company to potential hires and an average saving of $162,500 per employee in hiring costs and lost revenue thanks to in-company mentoring.
 
The timing for increasing opportunities at scale could not be more ideal or needed. Scaling internal mentorship is a method for exposing latent skills and a pathway to their speedy development. It is, in a sense, a way for people to discover and exploit their superpowers. The young need to find those superpowers more than ever.
 
The line between work and life is increasingly blurry, and employees now seek friendships, purpose and learning on the job. If a company institutionalizes mentorship and enables their employees to have the right career conversations with internal mentors, then the next career step for a lot of employees is much more likely to materialize within the same company. The potential for boosting retention through effective mentorship systematized at scale is amazing, especially for women and underrepresented people.      
 
You can help your employees by connecting these eager to grow mentees to untapped mentors at your own company who can give contextual advice, expand the mentee's network within the company, and foster a sense of belonging at the workplace.

Charu Sharma is an award-winning Indian entrepreneur, global keynote speaker and published author based in Silicon Valley. Currently, she is Founder and CEO of Next Play, an advanced AI app that facilitates internal mentorship matching for company employees. Prior to founding Next Play, Charu built two-award winning startup companies out of her college dorm room before getting recruited to LinkedIn to grow their Talent Solutions revenue and develop a mentoring program for women. Connect Charu Sharma Follow @nextplayinc