Employee Coaching and Development 101: What Every L&D Professional Should Know

Coaching and development go hand in hand—it’s often difficult to improve without direct and targeted guidance from someone who has relevant experience and knowhow. This is why 31% of frontline leaders say they want more coaching than they’re currently receiving from their managers.

While corporate coaching can take on a lot of different forms, performance coaching—the process of helping individuals or groups identify their strengths and areas for improvement in order to achieve their goals—has a critical role with most companies’ coaching and development strategies.

Performance coaching generally follows a four-step process:

1. Assessment
2. Goal setting
3. Action planning
4. Implementation

While the specifics can vary depending on your company and employees’ needs, the core of performance coaching is about helping people achieve their goals by providing them with the tools and knowledge they need.

How can you design a performance coaching program that drives employee success and business growth? We’ll dive into that question throughout the rest of this article. 

⏩Looking for ways to put your employees on the fast track to success? Check out our “Best Practices for Running an Employee Coaching Program” ebook for actionable advice and templates to help you get started. Grab your copy here!

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The business case for performance coaching 

Why invest in coaching and development? To put it simply: It’s the key to having better-performing individuals and companies. Here are just a few reasons why this is the case:

• With the help of coaches, employees work smarter, stay motivated, and are more likely to meet their goals. For example, 29% of sales professionals who are top performers receive one-on-one coaching, indicating a connection between coaching and performance on the job. Coaches also provide guidance that helps coachees tackle problems and navigate workplace challenges.
• The primary benefits of formal coaching are improved leadership and management skills, better employee performance, and better job satisfaction and engagement among coachees, according to the Association for Talent Development. 
• Companies with strong coaching cultures are 2.9 times more likely to be capable of engaging and retaining top talent (compared to companies that don’t have strong coaching) and high-potential employees are two times more likely to say they intend to leave their organization when their manager is not an effective coach, finds DDI.

Keep in mind that coaching shouldn’t just be for executives—employees at all levels can benefit from coaching. In the next section we’ll look a little more closely at how you might want to design coaching programs for employees at different levels.

Define what success looks like: Coaching goals by employee level

Performance coaching can—and should—look different at each stage of the employee lifecycle. It makes sense to design coaching programs based on the types of challenges employees are likely to face or the skills they’re likely to need during that phase of their work life. 

Here’s what this might look like:

• Entry-level employees need to focus on skills growth and confidence, so their coaching should focus on employee development.
• Mid-career employees are likely to be moving into people management roles or becoming expert individual contributors, so professional development coaching is most relevant for them.
• High-potential employees and future leaders need to focus specifically on leadership skills (which could include things like financial fluency, presenting, communication, and cross-functional collaboration, but can also be tailored to your organization’s specific needs), so leadership development coaching will be most relevant to them.
• Current managers and team leads need help navigating the specific challenges of being a manager in your context (which might include topics like handling performance reviews and hiring and onboarding new team members) as well as more general coaching for managers.
• Executives require a unique set of skills to be successful, including understanding and setting company strategy, making budget and staffing decisions, and being able to make decisions even with ambiguous or incomplete information. Executive coaching can help them hone skills like these or any others that you determine are necessary at your company. 

You can see that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to coaching—it really can be adapted to benefit employees throughout your organization!

Build an employee development coaching framework: From assessment to outcomes 

While the specifics of what coaches and coachees cover during their sessions can vary quite a lot, the overall framework of setting up a coaching program can follow a similar pattern. Taking this approach will help ensure you’re focused on employee coaching and development.

Here are the main steps to include:

• Step 1: Conduct a needs assessment. Whenever possible, align coaching objectives with business challenges and strategic priorities. For example, if you know that retention is a problem area for your company, you might focus coaching on helping employees prepare to take on leadership roles so they feel more invested in your company and likely to extend their tenure.
• Step 2: Engage stakeholders. Consult with leaders, coaches, and participants to understand expectations and define what success will look like.
• Step 3: Use the SMART framework. Make goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound for clarity and accountability (and encourage coaches to take the same approach with their coachees).
• Step 4: Identify potential coaches and provide them with training and resources.
• Step 5: Roll out your program, making sure you’ve communicated expectations and timelines with everyone—coaches, coachees, and managers.
• Step 6: Track your progress. You will likely want to gather data on both program participation (such as how many employees participate and complete their coaching programs) as well as effectiveness and impact on business metrics. For example, do coachees have improved retention rates, enhanced leadership capabilities, or increased productivity? 

And perhaps we should add in a bonus step 7, which simply involves making changes as necessary. If you’re not seeing the impact you’d hoped for on specific employee or business outcomes, try making adjustments to different aspects of your coaching program to see if this helps get you closer to your goals.

Choose the right coaching and development model for your organization

As you progress with planning your employee coaching and development program, you’ll want to consider which model will work best for your needs. Here are a few common types of coaching programs:

1. Executive coaching can be useful when your organization needs to improve leaders’ performance or if leaders have specific challenges they need to overcome.
2. Integrated coaching usually involves coaching as part of a bigger leadership development program. This type of coaching might last for a shorter time than executive coaching, but it helps ensure that the leadership development learnings stick.
3. Team coaching can be beneficial for teams at all levels of an organization, helping them work together effectively and identify patterns or roadblocks that may be holding them back.
4. Virtual coaching is the most common type of coaching in the workplace since it is perfect for teams that are spread out across different countries and time zones. Coaches and coachees communicate over video, emails, and instant messaging tools.

A few other questions to consider as you’re thinking through the logistics of your employee development coaching program include:

• Will you work with internal or external coaches? Bringing in external coaches makes sense when employees need highly specialized skills that others in your organization don’t have, but it can also be more costly. Training your existing employees to be coaches will involve more time, but could ultimately be more cost-effective and have a positive impact on your company culture.
• Will coaching take place 1:1 or in groups? Again, there are pros and cons for each approach. 1:1 coaching often builds a sense of trust and rapport that’s required for coachees to feel comfortable opening up and being vulnerable (and therefore growing), while group coaching can make your program more scalable. Plus, peer learning has been shown to be quite effective.
• What type of tools will you need to support your coaching program? While it’s possible to set up tasks like coach/mentor matching, scheduling, and feedback collection on a one-off basis, you’ll probably find it’s worth investing in a tool that can automate and streamline some of this work. Explore different options to help you find the best online platform for employee coaching. 

Design a coaching plan template for consistency and scale 

When it comes to what your coaches and coachees are covering in their sessions, you don’t want to be too prescriptive. At the same time, you can provide them with resources and templates that they can refer to if they’d like. Templates create consistency and make it easier to manage multiple coaching tracks across departments when you’re scaling coaching throughout your company.

For example, a coaching plan template can be useful to give structure to their conversations.

What should a coaching plan template include? 

• Coaching goals: What is the coachee hoping to achieve? How will they evaluate the coachee’s progress?
• Action items and timelines: What are the next steps for the coach and coachee? When should they be completed?
• Progress tracking: How will the coach and coachee know they’re making progress? What are some milestones or indicators they can look out for?
  

Metrics to measure when using coaching as a leadership development tool

How will you know if your leadership program is successful? By collecting feedback and tracking key metrics related to your desired outcomes. These might include:

• Employee sentiment: How do employees rate the coaching experience? How does their overall engagement and satisfaction with your company change after they’ve participated in coaching?
• Career progression: What percentage of coachees are promoted within six months to one year of completing a coaching program?
• Manager ratings: How do manager ratings of coachees compare to managers who haven’t participated in coaching? Do past coachees’ teams report higher levels of satisfaction or engagement with their work?
• Business impact: The exact metrics you’re measuring can vary depending on your business’s goals, but they could include things like increased sales or lower staff turnover.
  

Keep in mind that employee development coaching is not a “one and done” situation—once you establish a baseline of metrics, there’s a good chance you’ll want to make adjustments so you can continue to refine your program and get closer to meeting your goals.

Integrate coaching with your broader L&D strategy 

Your broader learning and development strategy likely includes a number of programs, such as skills training and mentorship programs. Performance coaching can complement and fill in the gaps of what you’re already offering, helping you create a more comprehensive roadmap for coaching and developing employees. 

As you build your L&D strategy, consider what might work best for group settings (like peer coaching) and what might work better in a 1:1 setting (such as coaching conversations where coachees might be sharing their struggles or working through personal challenges). Ideally, you’ll offer a range of options that provide support that’s tailored for each employee’s needs and circumstances.

Common mistakes to avoid with your employee coaching and development program 

You now have the foundational knowledge of what’s involved in getting a coaching program up and running. Before you get started, make sure you’re aware of these common mistakes that could thwart your program’s success:

• Launching without leadership buy-in: You’ll need support from leadership to make your coaching program successful, especially since leaders may need to step in as coaches. Even if you’re working with external coaches, leaders’ buy-in helps ensure coachees make time to participate in the program since it involves time away from their regular tasks at work. 
• Starting coaching without clear objectives: To make the most out of coaching, it’s important to understand what results you’re hoping to see, both on a company and coachee level. If you don’t have clear objectives, it will be difficult to prove the success of your program, which leads to…
• Failing to follow up or measure success: It’s rare to get anything perfect on the first try. That’s why it’s so important to track how your program is doing. Failing to follow up on feedback you’ve received or track how the program is performing puts the program at risk since company leaders (not to mention the finance team!) will ultimately be looking for proof of the return on investment.
• Not adapting programs to employee segments: Your coaching programs will only be as successful as the coachees who participate. If they find that the coaching is not targeted, relevant, or worth their time, they will be unlikely to complete the program. Make sure you gather their feedback and adapt the program as necessary to increase your chances of success. 

Build a flourishing employee coaching and development program in your organization with Together

While the majority of employees value coaches, only 17% of workers say they know how to find the right coach when needed. But the numbers don’t have to be that low! You can unlock the full potential of every employee at your company with a structured and targeted employee coaching program, as we’ve outlined here.

While it can be difficult to launch and run a company-wide coaching program, it doesn’t have to be. Partnering with Together helps simplify and streamline your work. Our business mentoring software handles tasks like scheduling and our mentor matching app connects coaches with coachees. This means you can focus on making an impact and achieving your program goals instead of administrative tasks. 

Want to learn more about how Together supports your coaching program’s success? Get in touch to book a demo!