Employee Engagement and Coaching Culture

Coaching has hit the mainstream as an effective and respected tool for employee development. Yay!

Research is now emerging on its connection to employee engagement.

Organizations are listening! (Did I say finally?)

I attended an excellent webinar last week hosted by the Human Capital Institute (HCI) that shared the findings of a coaching culture study that they conducted in partnership with the International Coach Federation (ICF). I’m a big fan of webinars, HCI and ICF, so it was a good day 🙂

Here are a few key findings:

• 65% of employees from companies with strong coaching cultures rated themselves as highly engaged
• 60% of respondents from organizations with strong coaching cultures reported revenues to be above average compared to their peer group

What is a coaching culture?

Simply put, it’s having a plan for getting coaching to the people. This could include the use of external coaches, internal coaches, or managers who have been specially trained to have coaching conversations with their direct reports. Many public and private sector organizations are implementing coaching as a strategic initiative.

I provided some examples in my last post.

Whether public or private sector, the organizations that I work with are at various levels in how they have integrated coaching.

Douglas Riddle and Natalie Pothier articulate these five levels best in their article What Clients Want – Coaching in Organizational Context.

Organizational Levels of Coaching

Level 1: Ad Hoc – External coaches engaged by individuals on a case-by-case basis
Level 2: Organized – Coaching within a standardized process to manage costs, ensure quality coaches, and increase accountability
Level 3: Extended – Integration of coaching into the overall HR strategy for leadership development and talent management
Level 4: Culture – Making coaching a foundational element of everyday behavior and attitudes; using coaching in a wide variety of ways
Level 5: Driver for Business Strategy – Built into the strategic plan to increase involvement and engagement of a major part of the workforce

So, how do you bring coaching into your organization? Build a coaching culture? Increase employee engagement?

Here are five steps to getting started.

1. Find a champion on your senior leadership team. When individuals at the highest levels have experienced coaching they are far more likely to support and promote the implementation on a wider scale.
2. Establish a budget. Organizations that allocate resources directly to coaching have found the most success in growing their programs. Determine if the project can be financed at the HR level or if resources will come from departmental learning and development funds.
3. Look for a pilot group. Most organizations already have learning initiatives in place for professional development. Adding coaching to an already existing program can assist in introducing and testing coaching without waiting to build a large scale plan.
4. Develop a criteria for coaches. Aligning with a set of standards for coaching excellence will ensure quality. Many look to the International Coach Federation as the gold standard.
5. Build a process. It can be a simple one, but it is important the outline the steps that should be taken when an individual is seeking coaching, or a manager is making a recommendation for coaching on behalf of an employee.
6. Create a coaching roster. Once standards are articulated, you can begin to find and vet coaches who will fit the bill. You can start small. Many organizations opt to have as few as three coaches for employees to choose from. Some offer a list of a dozen or more.
7. Go. All the planning in the world will pale in comparison to real results experienced by real people working with real coaches. Getting even one coaching contract in place will help you build the momentum.

More research is emerging all the time that supports the positive results of implementing a coaching culture. I will continue to be on the look out and share my findings here on my blog.

What resources have you found to help in building coaching cultures? Do you agree that coaching and employee engagement are connected? Tell me about it in the comment box below.

Commenting on blog posts has a lot of advantages, here are a few:

Here are the resources that I mentioned in this post:

Building A Coaching Culture – A report by the Human Capital Institute (HCI) in partnership with the International Coach Federation (ICF).
What Coaches Want: Coaching in an Organizational Context from Advancing Executive Coaching.