How well is your mentorship program performing? If you’re not sure how to answer that question, a mentorship survey can provide insights into how mentors and mentees feel about your program and where they see opportunities for improvement.
Of course, the next question is: How do you actually design and write your mentorship program survey?
In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know about mentorship program survey questions, including what topics to cover, how to word your questions, and other best practices to help you collect useful insights and continuously improve your program.
What is a mentorship program survey?
First things first: A mentorship program survey is a set of questions and prompts that is designed to help you measure your workplace mentorship program. How do participants (both mentors and mentees) feel about the program? Do they think the program is helping them achieve their goals or benefiting them? How is their relationship with their mentor or mentee?
The answers to these questions will help you improve your mentorship program. We’ll get into more specific questions later. For now, here’s an overview of the topics you might address in your mentorship program survey questions:
- Demographic details such as participants’ roles, locations, and company tenure
- Participants’ assessment of whether their match is relevant and a good fit
- What’s working well in the program and what are the areas for improvement
- Any information participants would like to share to help program managers improve mentorships
- Specific quotes that you can share with stakeholders about the program
You can send a mentor program survey manually, but if you already have a dedicated mentoring software like Together, you can easily run surveys without all the admin headaches.
Why should you survey both mentors and mentees?
You might be tempted to just send a mentorship program survey to mentees since they’re the ones who stand the most to gain from the experience. But it’s just as important to send your mentorship survey to mentors so that you can continue to improve their experience and make participating worthwhile for them.
Here are a few of the benefits of sending the mentorship survey to both mentors and mentees.
You’ll gain valuable insights into how to improve your program
When participants answer mentorship survey questions, you’ll gain valuable insights into what’s working in your program and what isn’t. Mentors and mentees can share their perspective on everything from matching process and their compatibility to the mentoring resources and structure you’ve provided for the program. While mentees will be able to speak about their individual experiences and career development, mentors will bring a broader perspective to their responses, pointing out ways to improve the program and make a bigger impact.
You’ll gather data to evaluate the success of your program
If you’ve followed best practices around structuring your mentorship program, you started out by defining clear goals and outcomes. And if you’ve set any goals related to participants’ satisfaction, collecting information directly from participants through a survey will help you measure how successful you’ve been in meeting those goals.
You might also want to ask questions about things that are hard to measure, such as participants’ sense of self-confidence, their satisfaction with their role or your company, or how prepared they are to step into a leadership role. For mentors, you can use this opportunity to gauge whether your program is living up to their expectations for leadership development or having a positive impact on their lives.
You’ll quickly resolve incompatible matches
If you survey program participants frequently, you can quickly identify any mismatches between mentors and mentees. You might set a specific trigger (for example, anytime a mentee or mentor indicates they are dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied with any aspect of the program) that prompts a specific action, like following up with that person directly. This can help you quickly make new matches or other program adjustments, rather than letting participant engagement and participation drop.
When is the best time to survey mentors and mentees?
There are a few moments when it makes the most sense to survey mentoring participants. These include:
- During registration: Use this opportunity to get to know more about participants and what they’re hoping to achieve from participating in the program. This will help you make the best mentor match.
- After mentors and mentees are matched: Once mentors and mentees have been matched, you can send a mentoring survey to make sure they’re happy with the match and gather information about their expectations for the mentorship. Collecting this information early in the program helps you compare their responses with the post-program survey to determine how well the mentoring experience matched their expectations and goals.
- Mini surveys after each session: No need to send a detailed mentorship program survey after every session but asking mentors and mentees one or two questions after each session prompts them to reflect on and consider whether they’re satisfied with their progress.
- Midway through the program: The halfway point of the program is a critical time to gather information from mentorship program participants. Design this survey to give mentors and mentees the chance to consider whether they’re meeting their goals or if they need to make changes to their arrangement.
- At the end of the program: This is your opportunity to really dig in and learn more about participants’ experiences. You can use the information you gather from this survey to make improvements to the program, enhance your mentorship program guidelines, and report to leadership on the success of your workplace mentoring program. At this stage, you might also send a mentor assessment questionnaire to gather more structured feedback about your mentors.
How to write effective mentorship program survey questions
Before you actually start writing your mentor program survey questions, there are a few key points to keep in mind. Here are some best practices for writing effective survey questions.
1. Define your mentor program objectives
Start with a clear definition of your mentoring goals and objectives. Are you focused on developing future leaders? Improving onboarding and decreasing the ramp-up time for new hires? Improving employee engagement and retention? The objectives you define will help you determine what kind of data to collect from your mentoring survey.
2. Come up with some hypotheses to test
Think of your first round of surveys as an experiment and let that guide how you design your questions. Not sure what we’re talking about? Here’s an example:
- Your hypothesis: Mentees with a higher match score with their mentors will be more satisfied with the program.
- Your experiment: Ask mentees to rate their satisfaction with the mentoring program, and then compare satisfaction scores to mentor-mentee match scores.
3. Write the survey questions
Now it’s time to actually formulate your survey questions. Remember to ask questions that address your key objectives and test your hypotheses. It’s also helpful to divide questions into two main buckets: quantitative and qualitative.
- Quantitative questions like, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your mentoring experience?" are easier to measure and compare because they generate clear data in terms of ratings or rankings.
- Qualitative questions like, "What aspects of the mentoring program do you find most beneficial?" prompt mentors and mentees to share more detailed and nuanced feedback.
It’s a good idea to use both types of questions so that you report a well-rounded story about how your mentorship program is delivering.
4. Consider what your measurement criteria will be
Ideally, you should be generating both quantitative and qualitative data. Each type of data requires a different method to measure and interpret your findings.
For your quantitative responses, you can use statistical methods to analyze this type of data. And for your quantitative responses, you can use thematic or sentiment analysis to help identify recurring topics without getting too caught in the weeds with individual responses.
5. Run a pilot test
Try sending out a pilot version of your survey to a small group so you can surface any issues with the questions (are people misinterpreting anything you’re asking?) or the structure of the survey (are people dropping off after a few questions and not completing it?). Based on what you learn from the pilot, make any necessary adjustments before a full-scale launch.
6. Send out the survey
The time has come—you’re ready to send out the survey to mentors and mentees. It’s a good idea to use follow-up reminders (which can be automated through your mentorship software) to remind procrastinators or anyone who might have missed the first notification.
7. Analyze the data you’ve received
After the survey has closed and you’ve collected all the responses, take some time to analyze the data, looking for patterns, trends, and learnings. How does this information stack up against your hypothesis?
8. Make adjustments to your program based on what you’ve learned
If you identify any major problem areas or gaps, make the necessary adjustments to your mentoring program. And this is not a one-and-done situation: Keep an eye on what happens after you make these changes to ensure they are effective.
9. Continue to iterate and adapt over time
Just like you’ll continue to make changes to your mentorship program over time, you’ll want to regularly revisit and refine both your survey and your analysis methods. You can continue to go back to the hypothesis-forming stage and go through the subsequent steps from time to time.
Examples of mentorship program survey questions: What to ask when
When designing mentoring program survey questions, make sure to account for different stages of the mentorship cycle. Here are some examples of questions to ask in each of the different mentorship program surveys you run.
Survey questions you can ask during registration
The registration process gives you an opportunity to get to know participants better. This knowledge—who they are and what they want to accomplish—will increase your chances of making successful mentor matches.
Here are some mentee survey questions to ask during registration:
- Besides your current discipline, what other professional disciplines are you interested in learning more about from your mentor?
- What goals do you hope to achieve by participating?
- Describe any experiences or learnings you hope to get from this mentoring program.
And here are some mentor survey questions to ask during registration:
- What other professional disciplines/functions do you have experience in, either here or at other employers?
- What goals do you hope to achieve by participating in the mentoring program?
- Which goals or accomplishments have you achieved in the past which you can mentor on?
- Describe any experiences or topics you can help with as part of this mentoring program.
Survey questions you can ask after matching
Once mentors and mentees get matched, you can send a survey to gain insight into the success of your mentorship pairing questionnaire.
Here are some mentee survey questions to ask after matching:
- How did you find the matching process?
- How did you feel about browsing available mentors?
- What would you do to improve the matching process?
- How did you feel about the quality of mentors available?
- How did you feel about the quantity of mentors available?
- Has the matching process made you more or less hopeful about the mentoring experience?
And here are some mentor survey questions to ask after matching:
- How did you find the matching process?
- What would you do to improve the matching process?
- Has the matching process made you more or less hopeful about the mentoring experience?
Survey questions you can ask after each mentoring session
Remember, you don’t want to overwhelm participants with too many surveys, but it can be helpful to send them a brief survey after each session.
Here are some post-session survey questions to ask your mentees:
- How is your mentorship with [mentor] going?
- On a scale of 1–10, rate your last session.
- What did you discuss?
- What was your key takeaway from the session?
And here are some mentor survey questions to ask after each mentoring session:
- How is your mentorship with [mentee] going?
- On a scale of 1–10, rate your last session.
- What did you discuss?
- What do you think your mentee took away from the session? What did you take away from the experience?
Survey questions you can ask midway through the program
Once participants are midway through the mentorship program, it’s a good opportunity to pause and reflect on how it’s going and make sure they’re on track to meet the goals they had for participating.
Here are some mentee survey questions to ask midway through the program:
- How is your relationship with your mentor?
- What do you enjoy about the program?
- What do you not enjoy about the program or think can be improved?
- What would you like to see happen in the second half of the program?
- How do you feel you are progressing toward your goals? Is there anything else you need to be successful?
And here are some mentor survey questions to ask midway through the program:
- How is your relationship with your mentee?
- What do you enjoy about the program?
- What don’t enjoy about the program or think can be improved?
- What would you like to see happen in the second half of the program?
- How well is the mentoring experience meeting your expectations? Is there anything else you need to feel like you’re being successful?
Survey questions you can ask when the program concludes
It’s important to give mentorship program participants the chance to reflect on their experience once the program ends. You want to get a sense of how well the program delivered on its promises and what adjustments could make the experience even better for future cohorts.
Here are some mentee survey questions to ask when the program concludes:
- How would you rate your overall experience with the mentorship program?
- What did you like most about the mentorship program?
- What could be improved?
- Did the mentorship program run as you planned?
- What are the most memorable things you learned from your mentor?
- How would you describe your relationship with your mentor?
- What activities or discussions with your mentor had the biggest impact on you? Why?
- Would you have preferred to meet more or less with your mentor?
- Do you feel like you got what you expected out of the program? Please elaborate.
And here are some mentor survey questions to ask when the program concludes:
- How would you rate your overall experience with the mentor program?
- What did you like most about the mentor program?
- What were some things you felt could be improved?
- Did the mentor program run as you planned?
- What are the most memorable things you learned from your mentee?
- How would you describe your relationship with your mentee?
- What activities or discussions with your mentee had the biggest impact on their experience? On your experience? Please elaborate on your answers.
- Would you have preferred to meet more or less with your mentee?
- Do you feel like you got what you expected out of the program? Please elaborate.
How to design your mentorship survey to optimize learning
Now that we’ve covered the basics of mentorship surveys and shared some sample questions to get you started, let’s take a look at some additional best practices that will help you learn as much as possible from your surveys.
Try to use a mix of different question types
In some cases, you’re looking for simple answers, like a ranking or rating, but in other cases, you’d like to get more detailed and personal answers from respondents. This is why it’s a good idea to use a mix of question formats, including open-ended, Likert scale, and multiple-choice.
Avoid leading questions
Leading questions are questions that contain the answer or subtly guide the participant to answer in a certain way. For example, asking something like, “Why are you unhappy with your match?” assumes that the respondent is unhappy. Try to phrase your questions neutrally and without bias.
Maintain participants’ anonymity
If you want respondents to feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions, it’s important that their responses remain anonymous. And don’t forget to let participants know that their responses are confidential, so they feel comfortable sharing constructive feedback.
Be intentional about finding the best timing and platform for distributing your survey
When will your participants be most receptive and willing to answer a survey? It will likely be during their regular working hours and on a platform where they already spend a lot of time, such as in their email or company messaging platform. Choosing a familiar and accessible platform increases the likelihood that mentoring program participants will respond.
Streamline your surveys with mentoring software
One simple way to streamline your survey process is with mentoring software that can help customize surveys, automate distribution, and analyze responses efficiently. Bonus: You get to spend less time on admin work, and more time on the more impactful parts of running your mentoring program!
The key to success? Mentorship program support from Together
Today’s workers are looking to do more than just collect a paycheck—they want to find a workplace that will nurture them and connect them with a larger sense of purpose. A workplace mentorship program is one of the best ways to show your employees that you’re investing in them and their future.
If you’re worried about all of the admin work that comes along with running a mentoring program, that’s what Together is for. The platform handles all the administrative tasks that come along with mentor programs, from registration and matching to reporting on your program’s success.
Want to explore how Together can support your mentorship program’s success? Get in touch to learn more about Together mentoring software.
