Reverse mentoring is a practice in which a junior employee mentors a more senior colleague, offering a fresh perspective that could inform their approach to diversity, leadership or business strategy.
What Is Reverse Mentoring?
Reverse mentoring flips the roles of a traditional mentorship, tasking early-career employees to share their perspectives and experiences with more senior employees. These relationships can help drive diversity efforts and provide insight into the cultural attitudes of younger workers.
Reverse mentoring conversations are often centered around company goals, like creating a more inclusive workplace. Such a program might introduce company leaders to underrepresented employees they might not otherwise meet. Through these relationships, senior employees can learn about the experiences of underrepresented employees, identify potential cultural blindspots and get ideas for developing or improving the company’s DEI strategy.
These sorts of conversations may already happen informally in some organizations, but by adopting a formal reverse mentoring program, it becomes more “consistent, scalable and equitable,” David Satterwhite, CEO of mentorship software company Chronus, told Built In.
Why Are Reverse Mentoring Programs Important?
By participating in regular conversations with a junior employee, a senior employee could gain valuable insights about social trends, consumer habits and the cultural attitudes of younger generations. These conversations could spark business ideas, improve business operations or lead to new human resources practices and policies.
“What grows a person and what grows a leader is when they’re able to actually be curious or be forced to think differently,” Marissa Andrada, chief transformation officer at WUF World, told Built In. “It helps you broaden perspectives and think about things in a different way.”
Reverse mentorship programs can also help bring to the surface previously overlooked issues that affect a large percentage of the organization. It’s important for senior executives to understand the perspectives of Millennial and Gen Z employees, for example, as they collectively make up the new majority of the workforce.
“There’s no [better] way to be relevant,” Andrada said, “than to understand the perspective of the employees that are the majority of the generations.”
Strategies to decode, maintain and improve company culture.
Reverse Mentoring Benefits
Reverse mentoring programs can benefit companies by improving employee retention, spurring innovation, promoting diversity and developing the next generation of leaders.
Improves Employee Retention
Younger employees may be more inclined to stay with their company when they feel like their voices are heard. In 2017, Pershing, a subsidiary of investment bank BNY Mellon, said it retained 96 percent of the 77 Millennials that participated in a reverse mentoring program over a three-year period.
Companies with reverse mentoring programs may also find it easier to recruit early-career workers, many of whom prefer to work at organizations that care about the perspectives, experiences and development of younger employees.
Develops Future Leaders
Junior mentors are often tasked with leading reverse mentor relationships, which helps them develop confidence and leadership skills. These skills, combined with the relationships they’ve developed with the senior colleague, can position junior mentors for advancement within the organization.
While the focus of reverse mentorship programs is directing information upward to senior colleagues, these relationships typically involve a give-and-take, as the more experienced employees will want to share their expertise and advice with the junior employees.
“Very often, there are these massive benefits going back and forth in a two-way fashion,” Satterwhite said.
Spurs Innovation
Junior mentors may be able to introduce senior mentees to new ideas, technologies and market trends that could lead to business innovation. They may be knowledgeable about social media trends or consumer habits that are unique to the coveted 18-to-34 age group.
Reverse mentoring can also give executives a valuable look into the work happening on the front lines of the organization, providing insights into customers’ challenges and needs.
“If you’re a senior leader that’s out of touch with what they’re dealing with, then you’re not making decisions that [support] those relationships that matter so much at the front lines of your organization,” Satterwhite said.
Promotes Diversity
Some reverse mentoring programs intentionally pair senior leaders with employees from underrepresented groups, as a way to create a more inclusive work environment. This allows company leaders to get to know their colleagues, as well as learn more about the employees’ lived experiences and the issues they encounter on the job — information the company leaders can then use to inform their management style, change policies or transform the company culture.
Challenges of Reverse Mentoring
Reverse mentoring programs come with their share of challenges, though, as people can have trouble adjusting to their flipped roles — especially if there’s not a clear objective.
Senior Employees Have to Be Willing to Learn
Senior leaders who are used to calling the shots at an organization may have difficulty listening to feedback and new ideas for employees who are far younger and less experienced than them.
“The biggest hurdle for most mentees is the role reversal,” Wendy Murphy, associate dean of undergraduate programs and professor of management at Babson College, told Built In. “Sometimes you have people who oversee 3,000 to 5,000 employees and you’re asking them to put on the mentee hat and get back into the learning role.”
Junior Employees Have to Be Willing to Teach
The role reversal can also be difficult for junior mentors, who may feel intimidated about taking the lead in a relationship with a senior executive — particularly if they have constructive criticism about the organization. Program administrators can help junior employees navigate this uneven power dynamic by offering coaching. The junior mentor might also become more comfortable with the mentee after they get to know each other during the first couple meetings.
Clear Goals Have to Be Stated
Without clarity and structure, the participants may question whether the meetings are a productive use of time and eventually deprioritize them.
Reverse mentoring programs should have clear goals, and the administrator of the program — be it HR or another department — should provide both parties with resources, like meeting templates and conversation topics, to help them reach the goals of the program. In some cases, the two parties may determine their objective through the initial conversations about their backgrounds and professional interests.
“When there’s not a clear objective or objectives that you’re trying to accomplish in that one-to-one relationship, it’s going to fail,” Andrada said.
Examples of Reverse Mentoring
Jack Welch, the late CEO of General Electric, implemented a reverse mentoring program in 1999 to learn about the business applications of the internet, marking the first wide-scale reverse mentoring program at a large corporation. Since then, the practice has been adopted at several Fortune 500 companies. That said, a 2023 survey shows reverse mentoring is still relatively rare, adopted by only 12 percent of the more than 1,100 respondents.
Here are some notable examples:
EY
EY’s reverse mentoring program is designed “to foster a deeper understanding and stronger connection” between senior leaders and professionals who are earlier in their careers, Alex Laurs, chief learning officer of EY Americas, told Built In.
The mentor and mentee select each other based on their shared goals and interests and meet once a month for meetings structured around discussion guides and various conversation topics. Mentors share their perspectives around technology, innovation and market trends, while also promoting intergenerational communication and more inclusive decision-making processes.
“The mentors have an opportunity to lead conversations while the senior leader mentee has a chance to learn and share their own career and life experiences, building mutually strong connections,” Laurs said.
Estée Lauder
Estée Lauder established its CEO Global Reverse Mentor Program in 2015 to give early-career employees a voice and to tap into the latest trends and technology. As of 2024, more than 650 junior mentors and 300 senior leaders have participated in more than 40 reverse mentor programs.
The program has spawned strategic advisory boards that have contributed to hundreds of Estée Lauder business initiatives across the company’s portfolio of brands. In 2017, for example, the La Mer Millennial Advisory Board created a social media campaign about winter skin moisturizer that tapped into the trending Danish concept of hygge, bringing youthful energy to an otherwise dry topic.
BNY Mellon
Investment bank BNY Mellon began its reverse mentoring program in 2013 to tap into younger generations’ insights about the workplace and technology.
The company’s reverse mentoring program pairs senior executives and early-career professionals based on diversity of thought, experiences and one’s unique journey, Jemini Sharma, co-lead of BNY Mellon’s intergenerational employee resource group GENEDGE, told Built In. GENEDGE oversees the reverse mentoring program, which encourages mentors and mentees to meet monthly.
Sharma said the mission of the program is to “ingrain employee diversity into company culture — pairing emerging generations with senior leaders to develop fresh perspectives on the work environment and key life trends.”
Strategies to decode, maintain and improve company culture.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is reverse mentoring?
Reverse mentoring pairs an early-career employee with a senior executive to share their insights on emerging trends and technologies or to lend their perspective on company policies and diversity initiatives.
What is an example of reverse mentoring?
A reverse mentorship program might pair an older white male executive with a young Black female employee with an interest in diversity and inclusion. Through their conversations, she might share her personal background, her experience as an employee from an underrepresented group and which policies could be changed to make the workplace more inclusive for other employees from underrepresented groups.
What are the goals of reverse mentoring?
The goals of a reverse mentorship program are different for every company. Some companies may be interested in organizational initiatives like creating a more inclusive company culture, while others may target business initiatives, like opportunities to implement artificial intelligence technology or incorporate influencers in social media marketing campaigns.
