76% of people want a mentor. Only 37% have one. The gap doesn’t fall where most people think.
Walk into any organisation and ask where the personal development budget goes.
It goes to the managers. The revenue generators. The team leaders. The high potentials. The people already on a trajectory someone decided was worth investing in.
Now look around that same organisation more carefully.
Find the apprentice who is three months in and has no idea what their next five years look like. The personal assistant who manages an executive’s entire working life but has nobody managing their growth. The admin coordinator who keeps three departments running but sits outside every development conversation. The marketing assistant who is executing everyone else’s vision but has no mentor helping them build their own. The secretary who has been in the same role for a decade — not because they lack ambition, but because nobody ever lit the spark. The builder, the receptionist, the logistics coordinator, the customer service team, the shop floor worker who has been there longer than most of the managers above them.
Ask any of them when someone last invested in their personal growth.
The answer, almost universally, is never.
Not because they don’t deserve it. Not because they aren’t capable of extraordinary things. But because the systems we have built for personal development were never designed with them in mind.
That is the gap Ten Mentors was built to fill.
The numbers that should change how every business thinks about development
The statistics are stark — and they are not talked about nearly enough.
76% of professionals say they want a mentor. Only 37% have one.
That gap — 39 percentage points — represents the majority of the working population. And it is not evenly distributed. The people most likely to have a mentor are the people who already have the most: seniority, visibility, access to networks, managers who champion them.
The people least likely to have a mentor are the ones who need it most — those in the middle and lower tiers of organisations, those without professional networks, those whose roles are essential but whose development is treated as optional.
74% of frontline and non-management workers report lacking access to the professional networks needed to find a mentor. They are not failing to seek guidance because they don’t want it. They are failing to find it because nobody built the infrastructure for them.
And the cost of that failure is measurable:
- Mentoring programmes can reduce employee turnover by up to 32% among engaged staff
- Companies with structured mentoring report a 23% increase in employee satisfaction
- Replacing an employee costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary
- Mentored employees are five times more likely to be promoted
- Businesses with mentoring programmes report up to a 6x return on investment
These numbers represent what happens when mentoring works. The question is — who is it working for?
The answer, in most organisations, is the same group it has always worked for. Not the forgotten workforce. Not the people this page is about.
Who the forgotten workforce really is
The term is not about pay grade. It is not about job title. It is not about how essential someone is.
It is about invisibility in the development conversation.
The forgotten workforce is anyone who shows up, does their job well, and is never once asked: what do you want your life to look like?
The apprentice and the entry-level employee — learning a trade or a role, but with nobody developing the person behind it. Given tasks. Not given direction.
The personal assistant and the secretary — whose competence is assumed and whose ambition is invisible. Managing everything for everyone else, with nothing managed for them.
The admin coordinator and the back office team — who hold the infrastructure of organisations together and are routinely the last to receive any development resource.
The marketing assistant, the junior analyst, the operations coordinator — executing other people’s strategies without anyone helping them build their own.
The builder, the technician, the skilled tradesperson — whose expertise is undeniable and whose personal development has been nobody’s concern since they finished their training.
The shop floor worker, the retail assistant, the hospitality team — who are the most visible face of businesses they had no hand in shaping, and the least likely to receive anything that helps them grow beyond that role.
The care worker, the delivery driver, the logistics and facilities team — doing some of the most physically and emotionally demanding work in the economy, with the least structured support for their own wellbeing and growth.
What these people share is not a salary band. It is the experience of showing up every day in a system that was not built to develop them.
That ends here.
Why the system fails them — four real barriers
The time barrier. Most personal development tools require you to sit down, be deliberate, and create space. A care worker finishing a twelve-hour shift does not have the bandwidth to open a leadership book. A delivery driver covering eight hours on the road cannot attend a lunchtime coaching session. The tools exist — but they were designed for working conditions that most of the forgotten workforce does not have.
The access barrier. Corporate mentoring schemes, executive coaching, and leadership development programmes are overwhelmingly offered to people already in positions of some seniority. The further from the boardroom you are, the less likely you are to be offered anything structured. Small businesses often have no learning platform at all. The budget, where it exists, travels upward.
The relevance barrier. Much of the personal development content that exists speaks to people who are already fairly self-aware, already operating in environments where growth is discussed, already using the language of career trajectory and ambition. The content often feels like it was written for someone else — because it was.
The readiness barrier. This is the one that is almost never talked about. Not everyone is ready for a mentor. Mentoring works best when the person being mentored has some clarity — about where they are, what they want, and what is getting in the way. Many people in the forgotten workforce have never had the space, the tools, or the encouragement to develop that clarity.
Nobody is unready because they lack capability. They are unready because nothing helped them get ready.
That fourth barrier is the one Ten Mentors was specifically built to address.
Before the mentor — why this idea changes everything
Here is something the personal development industry rarely admits openly: a mentor cannot give you what you have not yet developed the capacity to receive.
Direction from a mentor lands when you have some sense of direction to orientate around. Challenge from a mentor works when you have thinking developed enough to be challenged. The acceleration a mentor provides only kicks in when you have already begun to move.
For the majority of the forgotten workforce, the missing piece is not access to a mentor. It is access to the foundation that makes mentoring possible — the self-awareness, the vocabulary, the belief that growth is available to them, and the practical tools to begin building on it.
We are not a replacement for human mentoring. We are the essential step before it. The thing that builds the soil in which mentoring can eventually take root. The starting point that the traditional system never provided.
What Ten Mentors provides
The Ten Mentors Box is a complete personal development system built for people who have never been given one. It does not require a learning management system. It does not need HR to build a programme around it. It is a physical product that goes into someone’s hands — and travels with them into their life.
The Ten Mentors Book is built on over a decade of research into what mentorship actually does for people. Fifteen core principles for living and growing well — written without jargon, for real people living real lives.
The High Performance Journal creates a structured space for self-reflection that most people in the forgotten workforce have never had. Daily. Consistent. No facilitator required. Over time it builds the self-awareness that makes everything else — including eventual mentoring — more effective.
The tools and resources turn thinking into behaviour. Because personal development is not about understanding things. It is about doing things differently, repeatedly, until the difference becomes permanent.
Ten Mentors Music is the piece that follows someone into their day. Human-written lyrics, rooted in real experience, produced to travel with people in the real moments of their lives. The commute. The shift. The drive home after a heavy day. The music keeps the message close when everything else is pulling in the other direction.
Together, these four elements create a foundation. And from a foundation, everything becomes possible — including, eventually, the mentor.
For businesses — what this means for your organisation
The forgotten workforce inside your organisation is not just underserved. It is underperforming relative to what it could be — not because of a lack of ability, but because of a lack of support. And that gap has a cost.
Disengagement costs businesses billions annually. Turnover — particularly at the frontline — is one of the most expensive operational problems any organisation faces. And the research is consistent: the business impact of employee mentoring — on performance, retention, and team cohesion — is significant and measurable.
Ten Mentors does not require infrastructure, facilitation, or significant HR resource. It is a physical product you can put in someone’s hands. For the cost of a team lunch, you can give someone in your organisation something that could change the direction of their working life.
The businesses that invest in the people most organisations overlook are the businesses that retain them, develop them, and build the kind of culture that compounds over time. We have written about exactly why in our breakdown of why most employees never get a mentor — and what the alternative looks like.
The sponsorship programme — taking this into communities
Some people will never be reached through their employer. Because their employer is small, stretched, or simply not thinking about this yet.
For those people, Ten Mentors runs a community sponsorship programme. Businesses, foundations, and individuals can sponsor boxes for workers in their communities — the admin teams, the care workers, the apprentices, the people who keep everything running and receive nothing structured in return. Ten Mentors will deliver talks, facilitate conversations, and bring this movement into the spaces where it is needed most.
Find out more about the sponsorship programme →
This is a movement, not a product
We are building the argument — backed by a decade of research and real-world evidence — that personal development belongs to everyone. Not just the people already on a trajectory. Not just the people whose managers championed them. Not just the organisations with a budget for this kind of thing.
Everyone.
The apprentice who has been given tasks but never direction.
The PA who has managed everything for everyone else, with nothing managed for her.
The admin coordinator who has kept the operation running for years and has never once been asked what she wants her life to look like.
The builder who knows his trade inside out and has never been given anything to help him know himself.
The care worker who gives everything to the people she looks after and has nothing structured to help her look after herself.
These people are not waiting to be saved. They are not lacking in capability or ambition or desire to grow. They are lacking access. Tools. The basic signal from the systems around them that their development matters.
Nobody is unready because they lack capability. They are unready because nothing helped them get ready.
Ten Mentors gives them that. Before the mentor. Before the programme. Before anyone has formally decided they are worth investing in.
Because we have already decided.
Start here
If you are someone who has never been given a personal development tool —
Explore the Ten Mentors Box →
If you are a business that wants to invest in the people most organisations overlook —
Bring Ten Mentors to your team →
If you want to sponsor boxes for workers in your community —
Join the sponsorship programme →
If you want to understand why most employees never get a mentor —
Read the full breakdown →
If you want to understand the music that travels with people into their day —
Discover mentoring music →
Ten Mentors is the first personal development system built specifically for the people who have never been given one. A book. A journal. Tools. Music. And the belief that growth belongs to everyone — not just the people at the top.