Optimize Your Greatest Asset -- Your People: How to Apply Analytics to Big Data to Improve Your Human Capital Investments

Appendix EMentoring Case Study

Sun Microsystems: University Mentoring Program

Background

Sun Microsystems has developed computer servers, workstations, storage systems, and more in support of open systems and open source software. The vision of Sun Microsystems is “The Network is the Computer,” and its commitment is to encourage collaborative network participation through shared innovation, community development, and open-source leadership. Sun Learning Services (SLS), the training organization within Sun Microsystems, initiated a companywide mentoring program. This leading-edge program requires an extensive investment in time and commitment by both the mentor and mentee. Understandably, Sun sought to measure and optimize the impact of this initiative, analyzing it to determine if there were tangible individual or organizational benefits. The resulting two-phase, longitudinal study spanned seven years.

The intention of the mentoring program was to improve employee performance. At times, mentors were paired with more than one mentee. Phase One of the study compared 98 employees to a control group of 1,436 demographically similar employees. Phase Two examined 838 mentees and their 677 mentors with a control group of nearly 5,000 (151 of the mentors had been mentees at some time during the study period). The total control group of over 6,000 comparable Sun employees provided a solid statistical baseline for performance comparisons. The Phase One cost was approximately $125,000. ...