Case Study: Samsara
The Challenge
To better achieve its goal of connecting physical and digital worlds for its customers, Samsara had the inspired idea of better connecting its employees. The plan, rooted in the company's core principles, was to pair employees to elevate employee connections and development to drive engagement, and innovation. The program's insightful name — Owl Connected Mentorship — is a keen-eyed nod to how it would ultimately strengthen these connections.
Samsara was growing rapidly, and the program set out to address inclusion, belonging, and employee integration across an expanding, diverse, and dynamic workforce. It was almost immediately successful: shortly after the initial launch, more than one-third of employees wanted to participate, and the Owl Connected Mentorship program spread its wings across the entire organization.
For the program to achieve its goals across such an impressive employee base, it needed to scale safely across the organization while maintaining the strong connections, streamlined onboarding, and powerful engagement that made it so appealing in the first place.
The Solution
The company turned to Together, Absorb's integrated mentoring solution, to address the challenge of maintaining scale and connection. The platform enabled scalable, data-driven mentor-mentee matching, seamless calendar integration, and intuitive user experiences that made it easy for employees to connect meaningfully.
"Samsara is a data-driven company with dedication to the customer experience. We saw those same attributes in the Together Mentoring Software," says Nicole Ferenzy, Senior Inclusion & Belonging Partner at Samsara.
"From the HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems) integrations, data-driven quality matching and program flexibility, to reporting features — these were key elements in our decision to implement and expand the software to our entire employee population."
Thanks to rising interest and Together's capabilities, the Owl Connected Mentorship program quickly expanded companywide. The team leveraged both new and existing initiatives to promote the program, from employee resource groups like the "Women of Samsara Mentorship Mixer" to R&D mentorship programs for new engineering managers.
The program was promoted quarterly during standing check-ins and coffee chats, and the team hosted lunch-and-learns with executive leadership to reinforce the value of career-long mentorship. Meanwhile, reporting tools from Together track engagement from the mentor-mentee pairings and inform leader decision making.
The Results
With an unflinching eye on data and success metrics, Samsara's Owl Connected Mentorship program has seen strong data-backed results, reinforcing its value.
The program continues to achieve its primary goal of driving employee connection, engagement, and retention. It is a contributing factor to retaining the company's highly skilled workforce.
Since launch, the program has attracted more than 1,000 of Samsara's roughly 4,000 employees, which is 30% more than its original goal.
"The Together platform provides a great springboard to help ensure a successful program, but there still remains intentional and ongoing efforts at every leadership level to promote the value of the program and platform."
Overview
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