The Team Leader & HR Handbook

Replacing one good person can cost up to twice their salary once you count recruitment, ramp-up and lost knowledge. People with a mentor are twice as likely to be engaged at work, and far more likely to stay.

And here's what three decades of research adds: the strongest mentoring results come from organic relationships, where the mentee chooses the mentor, not from matching algorithms and cohort management. (There's a full summary of the evidence in our mentoring-evidence guide.)

Leverage is built around that finding. Your people choose their mentors: someone they already trust, who joins free, or a vetted Leverage mentor they pick themselves. The platform adds the structure that makes it stick. You get visibility that it's working, without ever seeing inside the conversations. Relationship-led, not program-led.

• 5, 10 or 25 paid Members. Members are the people on your team; your subscription covers them.
• Each Member invites one mentoring partner free. Their mentor never pays anything.
• Private workspaces for every pair. Session plans, live shared notes, agreed actions that carry forward.
• An admin dashboard with engagement metrics. Activity, never content.
• Bulk invites and seat management. Nothing to administer after setup.

Every Team plan starts with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. Start small and add seats as your team grows.

1. Start your team on the pricing page and choose your seat count.
2. Invite your people by email. They each get their own account and private space.
3. Tell them what it's for. One honest paragraph from you beats any launch campaign. Something like: "We've set up Leverage so each of you can work with a mentor properly: someone you choose, in a private space your manager can't see into. Use it for whatever you're working on or working towards."
4. Let them run. Each person completes their own short setup, names what they want to work on, and either invites a mentor they trust or books a vetted one.

That's it. There is nothing for you to schedule, match, or manage.

This is the most important section in this handbook, and it's worth repeating to your team word for word.

You can see engagement: who is active, how often pairs are meeting, sessions completed, and how actions are progressing across the team.

You can never see content: no notes, no goals, no session plans, no conversations. Not summarised, not anonymised, not ever. The privacy isn't a setting; it's built into how the platform stores and serves data.

Why it matters: mentoring only works when people speak freely, about confidence, about struggles, sometimes about the job itself. The moment people suspect their manager can read along, the conversations go shallow and the value disappears. Your visibility of activity gives you evidence it's working; their privacy is what makes it work.

On your team admin page you'll see active members this week and month, sessions completed, upcoming sessions, and active spaces. What to look for:

• A pair with no activity for a few weeks usually means a stalled relationship, not a broken one. A light "how's your mentoring going?" in a one-on-one is enough; don't ask what was discussed.
• Someone who never started may not know who to ask. Point them at the Find a mentor page and the free intro call, or remind them the invitation can go to anyone they respect, inside or outside the company.
• Steady sessions and moving actions are the pattern you want. You don't need to do anything except occasionally say you've noticed.

Your subscription covers your Members and their invited mentors. If your people book vetted Leverage mentors, those sessions are paid per session at the mentor's rate, by the person booking. Org credit packs, which let you fund vetted-mentor sessions for your team, are coming; register interest on the gift page and you'll hear first.

Every first paid session with a Leverage mentor is covered by our first-session guarantee: if it isn't useful, we refund it.

• Frame it as a benefit, not a program. "You get a mentor, your choice, private to you" lands better than any initiative language.
• Go first. If you have a mentor, say so. If you don't, get one; your people notice what you do more than what you announce.
• Mention it in one-on-ones for the first month. One question, "have you had a chance to set up your mentoring?", carries more weight than three reminder emails.
• Respect the wall. Never ask what someone discussed with their mentor. It signals everything.

• Can I add or remove seats later? Yes, seat management is in your team settings.
• What happens if someone leaves the company? Remove them from the team; their private mentoring content remains theirs, not yours.
• Can admins be members too? Yes. Admins can hold a seat and do their own mentoring alongside managing the team.
• Can we have more than one admin? Yes, and co-admins see the same billing and engagement views.
• Who do I talk to? hello@leveragementoring.com.au. A real person, usually same day.