Mentorship is a vital part of any successful organization, whether it happens organically or through company-sanctioned programs. But for Amazon — and its global workforce of 1.4 million employees — embracing technology has brought structure, guidelines and success to mentoring.
Amazon first launched its mentorship program in 2016, in partnership with cloud-based mentoring platform Chronus. The technology enables Amazon to match mentors and mentees based on career level, location and areas of expertise or learning. Employees can search for colleagues via additional filters like job title, and once matched, receive a plan and resources to help mentors and mentees both reach their goals. The program is available to all employees (including hourly workers) and has grown from 18,800 participants in 2016 to 159,000 employees so far in 2022.
"We see mentorship as a resource that provides a safe space for employees, empowering them to take ownership of their
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Chronus is a
"Every mentoring program is its own snowflake," says Chronus CEO Seena Mortazavi. "It's not a copy-and-paste model."
From support during onboarding to ongoing discussions about company values and career paths, Mortazavi says Chronus can shape-shift to meet any organization's mentoring needs. The platform also integrates with existing programs such as Slack or Teams and supports video calls. Providing employees with a sense of belonging in a modern and mostly virtual world can be a challenge for any organization; Mortazavi says the platform aims to make the employee experience more human, less administrative — and more in line with the modern worker's expectations.
"The newer generations of workers grew up with Netflix and Uber, and now they want to get promoted and
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As Amazon's partnership with Chronus has evolved, so have programs available to various employee groups. For example, a mentoring offering is specifically focused on helping managers and people leaders feel supported in their role, serving as an extension of Amazon's existing Day One manager onboarding program.
"When you scale the way that
Culturally, mentorship can help build inclusive companies that embrace the varying perspectives of their diverse teams. Mortazavi notes that Chronus partners often rely on the platform to support employee resource groups.
"You can have and support a very diverse culture with ERGs, but ERGs might exist in silos," he says. "If you bring a diversity mentoring program in and combine it with ERGs, then you're creating something really impactful. Your natural inclination as a human is to gravitate to people that look like you; breaking those silos down and intentionally connecting people with different backgrounds can really help level the playing field."
One of the Chronus's most popular use cases across organizations, he says, is mentoring high-potential women and supporting them as they push to break through that proverbial glass ceiling.
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"Those programs have gained even more traction since the pandemic because there's been such a heavier burden on women, from family obligations to burnout and everything else," he says. "Support will continue to be more impactful in today's world, more than ever before. The impact mentoring has on DEI initiatives just cannot be understated."
Within Amazon, Menard notes that the mentorship program does work in tandem with the company's existing employee groups, expanding conversations of diversity and inclusion.
"[The mentorship program] is particularly effective when coupled with Amazon's existing affinity groups, which bring together employees based on shared values and interests," Menard says. "[Its] scalability as a professional growth driver across employee groups and existing programs makes it a valuable tool for capturing diverse perspectives and broadening viewpoints."
