Acquiring talent is expensive. Retaining them is even more costly. Mentoring offers not only cultural and personal benefits but also proven economic benefits for the company. Studies and practice show: When set up correctly, mentoring programs yield remarkable returns.

Mentoring as a Strategic Tool

Mentoring is a development tool that secures knowledge, promotes talent, and strengthens belonging. In times of skills shortages and high turnover, it becomes a competitive advantage: employees develop faster, stay longer, and perform more.

Program Costs

To calculate the ROI (Return on Investment), we start with a cost analysis. A typical mentoring program consists of two cost blocks: participant time commitment and HR coordination.

• Participant Time Commitment: With an annual salary of CHF 100,000 and twelve sessions of one hour each, this results in about CHF 600 per person.

• HR Coordination: To set up and accompany a mentoring program, HR takes care of matching, communication, and evaluation. With 20 participants, this is estimated at 20–50% of a full-time workload, approximately CHF 35,000 per year.

👉 Example: With 20 participants, or ten mentoring tandems, total costs amount to around CHF 47,000 per year.

Savings: Productivity and Retention

The long-term study by Sun Microsystems, which analyzed an internal mentoring program, showed savings through increased productivity and enhanced employee retention. Overall, the program led to a productivity increase of up to 20%. There was an improvement in retention rates of over 40% for both mentees and mentors. These effects directly impact costs – less recruitment, less onboarding, more continuity.

Example Calculation: ROI in Numbers

Scenario: A company with 8,000 employees, annual revenue of CHF 2 billion, and a turnover rate of 10% introduces a mentoring program with 50 participants.

• Program Costs: CHF 80,000 (participant work hours + HR efforts).

• Productivity Savings: CHF 2.5 million.

• Retention Savings: CHF 88,000.

👉 Total Savings: CHF 2.588 million.
👉 ROI: 3,135% – for every franc invested, 32 francs are returned.

Scale Effect through Digital Tools

With digital mentoring platforms, programs can be efficiently expanded. Automations, particularly in matching, significantly reduce HR efforts. Despite expanding the program to more participants, HR efforts do not increase, thanks to support from digital tools.

Where Mentoring is Particularly Profitable

ROI varies depending on the industry and target group. In industries with high turnover, such as social work or gastronomy, reductions in retention are critical. In industries with high value creation per capita, such as tech, pharma, or finance, productivity effects are even more pronounced. Finally, mentoring is particularly profitable for individuals in key positions: for executives and specialists, replacement costs are particularly high, which makes it even more worthwhile to use mentoring as a retention measure.

Conclusion: Mentoring as a Strategic Investment

Mentoring is not a “nice to have,” but a strategic investment with clear returns.
It increases productivity, reduces turnover, and makes companies more resilient. With modern tools, the effort is manageable—and the ROI continues to rise. For HR and leadership, the rule is: Those who establish mentoring today not only secure knowledge and talent but also achieve economic gains that go far beyond the resources used.