Oct 16, 2015 | Blog

3 Reasons to Build a Coaching Culture

Develop Your Workforce

More organizations than ever are leveraging coaching as a means of attracting, developing and retaining talented employees and augmenting existing talent- and leadership-development offerings. However, a growing body of research suggests that offering access to Executive or Leadership Coaching is only the first step. The organizations that leverage coaching most successfully invest in robust coaching cultures.

In 2014, the Human Capital Institute (HCI) and the International Coach Federation (ICF) conducted benchmark research on organizational coaching cultures and found that organizations with strong coaching cultures were more likely to have high rates of employee engagement and strong revenue growth.

This year, HCI and ICF conducted a follow-up to this study focusing on the relationship between strong coaching cultures and employee engagement. In Building a Coaching Culture for Increased Employee Engagement, organizations were scored according to a six-point coaching culture composite, with a point awarded for each of the following:

  • Strongly agree/agree that employees value coaching.
  • Strongly agree/agree that senior executives value coaching.
  • Managers/leaders (and/or internal coach practitioners) spend above-average time on weekly coaching activities (19 percent = average for managers; 16 percent = average for internal coach practitioners).
  • Coaching is a fixture in the organization with a dedicated line item in the budget.
  • All employees in the organization have an equal opportunity to receive coaching from a professional coach practitioner.

Organizations scoring five or six out of six on the index were classified as having strong coaching cultures. Among responding organizations, 15 percent are classified as having strong coaching cultures.

Key takeaways from this research included three powerful reasons for organizations to invest in building coaching cultures:

1.Organizations with strong coaching cultures report higher employee engagement rates.

According to HCI and ICF’s 2015 research, 60 percent of employees at organizations with strong coaching cultures rated themselves as highly engaged, as opposed to 48 percent of employees at organizations without strong coaching cultures. Similar gaps were noted in the 2014 study.

2.Coaching is a powerful means of increasing engagement among high-potential employees.

Although many factors influence engagement, organizations offering coaching reported higher engagement levels compared to the previous year across all employee segments. This was particularly true with high-potential employees, with 60 percent of respondents reporting higher engagement levels for high-potentials with access to external coach practitioners, internal coach practitioners or managers/leaders using coaching skills.

3.Coaching is a cornerstone of employee engagement strategies.

Increasingly, organizations are adopting coaching and coaching-skills training for managers and leaders as concrete tactics to boost employee engagement. However, coaching also supports a host of other engagement-boosting tactics cited by respondents, including creating opportunities for employees to stretch and gain skills (70 percent), giving employees more ownership of work (53 percent) and increasing opportunities for co-worker interaction and socialization (47 percent).

Discover additional insights from Building a Coaching Culture for Increased Employee Engagement, including recommendations for building a strong coaching culture in your organization, by viewing HCI’s Webcast on Demand with ICF’s Director of Research and Education, Mark Ruth.