Lessons from Amazon’s Mentoring Programs
Today I attended a webinar called ‘How Amazon’s Mentoring Programs Support Employee Career Growth.’ My senior manager recommended it to me because I serve in a DE&I work stream promoting mentoring opportunities at my organization. Considering we have .67% of the participants that Amazon does, I was curious how these programs scale for such a large employer.
There are three areas where I recorded notes, so here are my takeaways:
Amazon Mentorship Programs (AMP) - There are 159,000 employees participating in AMP in 2022. Some of the ways this program is individualized is that it includes different options like 1:1 mentoring, Day 1 manager mentoring, and admin matching. Boutique tracks especially interested me; these are groups with specific outcomes that are more specialized. With a program this large, some things to keep in mind are that it can’t be one size fits all, and admin will need to be trained to confidently implement the program.
Chronus - This mentoring software has been crucial to helping Amazon automate and scale up their program since 2016. Similar to the program we use (MentorcliQ), it has an algorithm for customizing connections. Other features to look for in mentoring software includes established infrastructure, customer support, and data analytics to show measurable business impacts.
ON24 - This was the webinar platform and I found it so much more entertaining than any other webcasting or digital event tool. There was a chat, slides, speaker bios, questions, reactions, etc. What I liked about ON24 is that it didn’t feel like a one way street. Normally the only interactivity in a webinar is a couple of polls, and ON24 went way beyond that.
That’s a wrap for what I learned. Hope it helps you when considering mentorship programs as part of DEI initiatives at your own organization.
