A workplace mentoring program means you have someone to turn to for guidance on improving both your approach to your job and your approach to career development. So, how do you convince the senior leadership team to introduce such a program?

To start, don’t simply float the idea by your manager in a passing moment; book a meeting and take the time to sell the benefits of a mentoring program to the person (or people) who needs to be sold on the idea. Here are two solid points to present your case.

1) Return on investment. Before investing in a program, your leadership team will want to know their expected return on investment. Mentoring doesn’t have a clear ROI but that’s no different than plenty of other initiatives that are essential to achieving overall company objectives. While you can’t measure the results of a mentoring program in actual dollars and cents, you can measure it in increased productivity, increased employee engagement and lower turnover rates.

And, a lower turnover rate is one of the key points. Because, if a company of 5,000 employees typically sees a 30 percent turnover rate every year, they’re spending a lot of money (some estimates suggest it’s $20,000 per employee) on lost productivity, recruitment and onboarding costs.  Engaged employees feel a connection to their workplace and are passionate about their company’s vision and goals. They are therefore less likely to choose to leave simply because they’re unhappy at work.

On another note, for associations, mentoring relationships create a concrete and tangible benefit for members, which lead to increased renewal rates and even a jump in new members.

2) Training opportunities. Many companies have professional development budgets for their employees. These budgets typically get spent on workshops, leadership courses and other training activities. A formal mentoring program is a powerful resource as it leverages the professional development knowledge from within an organization – meaning employees are learning from other employees.  This boosts leadership development and eases succession planning.

Once you convince senior managers on the benefits of introducing a mentoring program, encourage them to become champions of it. When they’re promoting the benefits of mentoring, everyone will see value in it as well.