1. Start with "Why?"
The most important part of setting up a mentorship program is articulating to employees why they as individuals will benefit from participating. For example, you can email all new managers and help them visualize that by becoming a mentor they can practice their people development skills in a safe space. Or, as mentees, they can get ongoing mentorship from a more experienced manager who knows the company policies and culture.To effectively communicate this to employees, you need to yourself establish your program goals first. Do you want to develop managers? Do you want to proactively provide access to mentorship to certain underrerpesented minorities? Do you want to break silo's and connect employees across different functions or locations? Once you understand the "why", you can then effectively communicate it to your employees and get them excited to enroll in your mentorship program.
2. Match based on mentees' goals
I recommend matching employees primarily based on their goals, so that they show up with a sense of urgency and actually follow through otherwise the relationships will fizzle out. Goals could range from learning SQL to learning about a specific team to navigating life as a new parent. Goals are very personal and unique, and hence it's crucial to match people accordingly. Chemistry plays a huge role, too. So, as a second layer, I recommend taking into account their preferences for location of their match, career philosophy, and personal identifiers such as being matched with a fellow person of color, parent, immigrant, etc.
3. Equip them with conversation topics
Most mentees don't know how to navigate these conversations. Often, mentors don't know how to build momentum and give guidance. You can hold a quick 30-minute training at the launch of your program to go over the basics of mentorship and what's expected of your employees. After you make the matches, you can send them a document suggesting conversation topics for the first three meetings.
4. Train them to follow through
The number one complaint we hear from mentors is lack of follow-through from their mentee. It's extremely important that you train your mentees on driving the relationship (that means sending follow up thank-you notes, scheduling the next meeting, sending their agenda before the meeting, and so on) and hold mentors accountable to treat mentorship meetings as they would treat an important work meeting.