Employers are missing a trick in the current climate by not focusing on developing business awareness through coaching, warns the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Although the percentage of organisations using coaching and mentoring has dropped to 77 per cent, compared to 90 per cent in 2009, most (84 per cent) of those organisations have upped usage since 2009.
“When we first launched this survey in 2009, against the full ferocity of the financial crisis and the retrenchment in business spending, we reasoned that coaching might be vulnerable. However, we find coaching in good health, though there are some long-term ailments which could cause problems in the future,” revealed the report.
The focus in coaching on understanding business, commercial and financial issues is low – 26 per cent. The CIPD launched its report, Coaching Climate, at its Coaching conference on 20 September in London.
Coaching is used most for developmental and personal effective issues, including as a tool for improving performance – poor performance (43 per cent) and to build on good performance (48 per cent), to develop skills and competence (67 per cent) and to support career transition (54 per cent).
Nearly three-quarters of organisations have a mentoring scheme in place (74 per cent). Most are happy for it to be informal.
The “ailments” include the lack of focus on business issues and insufficient evaluation, according to the CIPD. Just under two-fifths record evaluation around “stories and testimony” (37 per cent), compared to under a quarter in 2009 (23 per cent). The use of key performance indicators and business metrics is found in 30 per cent, while 28 per cent develop evaluation criteria at the contracting phase.
Seven in 10 report either increasing or stable expenditure on coaching, while under a quarter reported a decrease.
“It is encouraging to see that a relatively small number of organisations report decreases in their coaching budgets, compared to the number reporting decreases in overall funding in our Learning and Talent Development survey earlier this year,” said Dr John McGurk, CIPD adviser, learning and talent development.
Download a copy of the CIPD Coaching Climate report at: www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/survey-reports/coaching-climate-2011.aspx
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 6