Mentoring Is Going Mainstream. A New Chronus Survey Finds Scaling It Well Is the Hard Part.

Mentoring programs are reaching more employees than ever, but weak matches, engagement drop-off, and limited ROI proof are undermining the investment.

SEATTLE, Sept. 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chronus, the leading enterprise mentoring and employee community platform, released the findings of its inaugural State of Mentoring survey, an in-depth study of 94 senior HR and talent leaders at organizations actively running mentoring programs, fielded in partnership with strategy and research firm Thinktiv. The survey covers where mentoring programs stand today and the priorities of the leaders running them. The results reveal an industry at an inflection point: mentoring is no longer a niche perk for a select few, but a workforce-wide strategy under real pressure to perform.

Six in ten organizations expect to run more mentoring programs in the next two years. Budgets are growing and AI is on the horizon: 86% of HR leaders expect to evaluate or deploy AI-enabled mentoring within two years. And yet, beneath the momentum, a harder truth emerges: programs are struggling to keep people engaged, matching quality is falling short, and many organizations cannot prove whether any of it is working. The ambition is there. The infrastructure to match it is not.

"Great mentorship changes the trajectory of a career and delivers measurable ROI for a company," said Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO of Chronus. "As more companies open mentoring to larger pools of talent, the challenge becomes scaling it, starting with the match, without losing the human element that makes it work. HCLTech proves it's possible: their award-winning MentorMe program grew 240% in its second year to reach 45,000 employees globally, without sacrificing the personal connection that drives retention. That's the balance companies need to get right, and the ones who do will have a real edge in how they develop and keep their people."

Key Finding of the State of Mentoring Survey:

1. Mentoring Is Expanding Beyond Its Traditional Audience. Mentoring has long been a development tool for early-career employees and high-potentials, but the survey shows it's outgrown that origin. Nearly half (49%) of organizations now extend mentoring to every employee, and roughly a third (33%) extend it to senior leaders and executives — a signal that mentoring is becoming a fixture of the broader employee experience. The growth expectations reinforce this: 62% expect the number of mentoring programs at their organization to increase over the next 12–24 months, and 52% expect their mentoring budget to grow. Mentoring is becoming less a single career-stage program reserved for the lucky few and more a core pillar of how organizations develop their people.

"Mentoring used to be reserved for the few. Now it's built for everyone."

2. DEI Didn’t Disappear. It Evolved into Core Talent Strategy. Despite narratives about DEI rollbacks, the data shows more of a recalibration than an elimination. Nearly two-thirds of organizations (65%) aren’t cutting these programs entirely but rather folding them into core talent and employee development strategies. Investment tells a similar story: about half (48%) kept community and belonging funding flowing under different language, most report no major change (47%), and nearly a third (31%) say investment actually increased.

"The DEI rollback narrative misses the real story: organizations are repackaging these programs, not eliminating them."

3. AI Is Coming to Mentoring, But HR Leaders Are Setting the Terms. The momentum is undeniable: 86% of HR leaders are already using, evaluating, or expect to evaluate AI-enabled mentoring within the next two years. The pattern is telling: the top use cases aren't about automation or surveillance, but about fixing the moments where programs already break down — better matching, smarter goal-setting, and more consistent follow-through. But the same leaders who are leaning in are also drawing hard lines. Six in ten are unlikely to allow AI to act autonomously on HR decisions or feed mentoring data into performance reviews. Half say they're unlikely to allow session recording (50%), and just over half (52%) say they're unlikely to replace a human mentor or coach entirely with AI. The #1 vendor requirement most frequently selected (67%) is human oversight. Consent and governance aren't procurement checkboxes; they're the conditions under which AI gets in the door at all.

"HR leaders aren't resisting AI in mentoring — they're demanding it on their own terms."

4. Better Matches, Bigger Impact. The data tells a sequential story: programs don't fail at the end — they're set up to fail at the beginning. Nearly half of HR leaders (47%) say their matches feel generic or shallow, based on basic information rather than deeper context; and 43% say matches don't account for personality, interests, or motivation at all. Only 8% say matching quality is strong today.

When the foundation is weak, everything that follows suffers: 39% of participants match but never schedule a first meeting, 54% meet once and don't continue, and 57%, the largest group, keep going but never complete their goals or action items. The consequences compound: 54% of HR leaders say employees are less engaged in development programs as a result, and 44% say they can no longer prove business impact to leadership. It's no surprise, then, that 71% of HR leaders, the top answer by a wide margin, say the vendor support that would matter most is help driving participation and engagement.

"Fix the match, and you fix the program. Right now, too many matches aren't starting anything worth continuing."

5. HR Leaders Struggle to Prove Mentoring Works, and That's Becoming a Crisis. 41% of HR leaders cite limited reporting and ROI proof as one of their top challenges, second only to engagement drop-off. 53% say that clear ROI or executive-ready impact reporting is what would most justify keeping a dedicated mentoring platform in the next budget cycle. The ambition is there: 52% of respondents say workforce-level benchmarks, anonymized comparisons against similar organizations, would be "very" or "extremely" valuable. But almost none have access to them today. The programs exist. The data exists. The insight does not.

"In today's environment, running a mentoring program isn't enough. HR leaders need to show its impact.”

"Most engagement problems start at the match. Matching is the first line of a mentoring relationship, and if you don't get it right, nothing downstream matters. That means capturing what's actually motivating someone," said Sanjay Parmar, Chief AI Officer at Chronus. "Even so, a great match is only the start. That's where personalized, guided conversations make the difference, giving participants and organizations more from the program at every stage."

Survey Methodology

The survey of 94 senior HR and talent leaders at organizations with an existing mentoring program was fielded by Thinktiv in June 2026. The survey took an in-depth look at the state of mentoring programs with 100+ questions exploring everything from mentoring platform type to expected changes in mentoring programs.

About Chronus

Chronus is the only mentoring and employee community platform that transforms how organizations shape and leverage their internal talent networks, empowering leaders to accelerate business performance through their people. Chronus provides guidance in the flow of conversation that helps people align, share knowledge, collaborate, and grow faster together. Chronus partners with many of the world’s most respected organizations to ensure the right conversations happen at the right time—turning relationships into a measurable driver of performance. For more information, please visit chronus.com.

Media Contacts:

Escalate PR for Chronus

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