A Guide for HR Managers: Navigating the Process of Buying Coaching Services

Having spoken with so many HR leaders, we know that investing in coaching services has become increasingly essential for nurturing talent, driving performance, and fostering professional development within your organisations. However, the process of buying coaching can often be daunting, especially for those new to the practice. That's why we've put together this comprehensive guide to help HR managers navigate the journey of purchasing coaching services effectively.

Buying Coaching Services: The Challenges

By investing in professional coaching services, you empower your employees to unlock their full potential, enhance their skills, and navigate their career paths more effectively. However, buying career coaching services poses several challenges that require careful consideration.

One of the primary challenges you may face is finding the right coaching provider that aligns with your organisational culture and values. The coaching industry is vast, with numerous providers offering various approaches and methodologies. It can be a daunting task to sift through the options and ensure that the coaches you engage have the necessary expertise, qualifications, and a deep understanding of your company's unique needs and goals.

Another significant challenge lies in ensuring the quality and consistency of the coaching services provided. While certifications and credentials can provide a baseline, assessing the effectiveness of coaches and their ability to deliver tangible results can be complex. Measuring the impact of coaching on employee performance, engagement, and career progression requires a robust evaluation framework and clear metrics for success.

In addition to these challenges, HR leaders must also navigate budgetary constraints, ensuring that the investment in career coaching services aligns with the organisation's financial priorities. Demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) and quantifying the long-term benefits of coaching can be challenging, especially in the early stages of implementation.

Furthermore, integrating career coaching seamlessly into your organisation's existing talent development programs and ensuring buy-in from both employees and managers can be a hurdle. Effective communication, change management strategies, and a culture that values continuous learning and development are crucial for successful adoption and utilisation of coaching services.

Despite these challenges, the potential benefits of career coaching make it a worthwhile investment for organisations committed to nurturing their talent and fostering a high-performing workforce. By addressing these challenges head-on, partnering with reputable coaching providers, and implementing robust evaluation and measurement processes, HR leaders can navigate the complexities and maximise the impact of career coaching initiatives within their organisations.

Buying Coaching Services: The Process

The process of buying career coaching for your company might not be straightforward. With a vast array of coaching providers, methodologies, and pricing structures available, it's crucial to approach the selection process diligently. Here we'll explore the key steps involved in buying career coaching services, for your employees.

1. Securing Budget Internally: As HR managers, obtaining budget approval for coaching initiatives requires demonstrating the tangible benefits and return on investment (ROI) to key stakeholders. Start by outlining the specific objectives and outcomes you aim to achieve through coaching for the individual in question, whether it's leadership development, employee retention, or performance enhancement. Emphasise the long-term value of investing in talent development for this particular person, and provide data-driven insights and case studies showcasing the impact of coaching on individual and organisational performance.
2. Build a Clear Engagement Listing: It’s important to be as thorough in your briefing as you can. This is essentially a job description for the coach! The more clear you can be about what the coachee needs, their background, and anything else going on in your business, the better prepared the coach can be for a chemistry meeting. Include details like assessments completed, competency models, company values, etc so the coach has context at the briefing stage - the more thorough you can be, the better coach selection you can make.
3. Reviewing the Coach Pool: When evaluating potential coaches, it's essential to consider factors such as their qualifications, experience, coaching approach, and compatibility with your organisational culture and values. That’s where BOLDLY comes in! You don’t want to simply do a google search or ask around - it’s hard to know what quality you’ll get. Seek coaches who hold reputable coaching certifications, possess relevant industry experience, and demonstrate a track record of success in working with similar coachees or challenges. BOLDLY gives you the confidence that these qualifications, ethics, and reference checks have been done on any coach you’re shortlisting.
4. Engaging with a Coach: Once you've selected a coach, establishing clear expectations and objectives is crucial for a successful coaching engagement. Define the scope of work, including the number of coaching sessions (see below!), duration, and desired outcomes, and ensure alignment between the coach, the coachee, and the organisational goals. Make sure the manager is involved, and understands the remit of the engagement too, so they can be an enabler. Encourage open communication and collaboration throughout the coaching process, allowing the coachee to drive the agenda while providing guidance and support as needed.
5. Debrief Ongoing: Particularly at the mid point and end point of the coaching. You should be staying close to the coachee for their comments on the progress, and you should be in ongoing conversation with the coach too. Of course, don’t expect to know the content of the coaching, just the progress, and if there’s anything else needed to maximise the benefit. At the end, that thorough briefing you wrote will come in handy! Did the coaching achieve it’s objectives? If not, often coaching starts with one set of goals, and evolves to address other issues too. But simply having objectives keeps the process aligned to business needs and the motivations of the coachee so you can determine success.

So, How Many Coaching Sessions?

When it comes to the length of an executive coaching engagement, there are two main schools of thought - the goal based approach, and the retained relationship based approach.

‍

The Development Goal Based Approach

Coaching is inherently goal based. It’s about defining development objectives - whether it’s a new skill, behaviour, or way of thinking that enables a coachee to achieve their career success - and defining a pathway to achieve those objectives. A coach works to explore options and ways of development that are personalised to the coachee, in an on-the-job method of experimentation and reflection. Because coaching is goal based in this way, many experienced coaches believe that an engagement should be for a fixed period of concerted career growth, and should end when the goal is achieved.

This is a professional approach to coaching. Because the industry seeks to demonstrate return on investment, when we define the goal and an expected timeline to deliver it, we can more confidently say whether coaching has had its intended impact. For example, an up-front agreement to 6, 8 or 12 sessions gives the coaching relationship enough time to develop effective rapport, but also creates the expectation of delivering personal development for the coachee within a reasonable period.

The benefit of this approach is that the coachee knows from the beginning of the engagement that they need to maximise each session, and that they will ultimately be sustaining the skills independently in the long term. This means they don’t foster a dependency on the coach, but rather come to count on their own ability to learn and grow in new, first time situations at work.

The Retained Relationship Approach

Alternatively, and particularly in executive coaching engagements, the coachee and their organisation may seek an ongoing coaching relationship. This is aimed at ensuring the relationship matures and deepens year on year, and that the coach is ready and assimilated into the leaders way of thinking and company culture to support the leader quickly when challenges arise. This coach also plays the role of confidante when the executive needs a private place to share their true thoughts with complete confidentiality.

This coaching relationship is less goal oriented and more of a facilitated reflective space for the executive. The risk of creating dependency is still important to consider, and bringing a level of accountability to the coaching relationship is essential. The CHRO or board chairman should still have access to the coach, in a transparent and ongoing dialogue with the executive to ensure the relationship is productive. There’s plenty of ex-ceo ‘coaches’ out there who are happy to take long lunches and bestow wisdom from their own experience! But this isn’t coaching - for an essential, ongoing executive coaching relationship, we encourage working with masters qualified coaches with a grounding in psychology and business. It’s essential that this coach has a supervisor of their own, to ensure they have the necessary support and professional oversight to manage the complexity of a long term executive engagement.

Both Work, If You're Working With a Qualified Coach

‍

So, when it comes down to it, MOST engagements should be fixed term, with clear goals and an objective to make the coachee self-sustained in their development goals. However there are cases where ongoing engagements can be suitable, so long as the relationship is supported by contact points of accountability within the organisation and beyond into the coaches supervisory relationship. BOLDLY is here to help you with both!

How Do We Know If Coaching Was Effective?

Investing in career coaching for your employees is a strategic decision aimed at fostering their professional growth and development. However, a common question that arises is – how do we determine if the coaching initiatives have been truly effective? Measuring the impact of coaching can be challenging, but it's crucial to ensure that your investment is yielding tangible results and driving positive outcomes for both individuals and the organisation.

One approach to evaluating the effectiveness of career coaching is through regular check-ins and feedback sessions with the participants. Encourage open and honest communication, where employees can share their experiences, insights, and any visible changes or improvements they've noticed as a result of the coaching process. Additionally, seek input from managers or colleagues who can provide an external perspective on the coachee's growth and development.

Another valuable metric to consider is the achievement of specific goals or objectives that were established at the outset of the coaching engagement. Work closely with the coaches to set measurable and achievable targets, whether they relate to skill development, performance enhancement, or career progression. Regularly review progress against these goals and celebrate milestones and successes along the way.

Furthermore, you can assess the broader organisational impact of career coaching by examining relevant metrics such as employee engagement, retention rates, and overall productivity. While these factors may be influenced by various initiatives, a well-designed coaching program should contribute positively to these areas. Conduct surveys, analyse data, and gather feedback to gauge the collective impact of your coaching initiatives on the organisation's overall talent management strategy.

It's important to remember that the effectiveness of career coaching is not always immediately apparent or easily quantifiable. Personal growth, increased self-awareness, and shifts in mindset can be powerful outcomes that may manifest over time. Remain patient, and trust the process, while continuously evaluating and refining your approach to ensure maximum value is derived from your coaching investments.

In summary, purchasing coaching services involves strategic planning, thorough evaluation, and effective communication to ensure alignment with organisational objectives and maximise the value of the investment. By securing internal budget, carefully reviewing the coach pool, and setting clear expectations for engagement, HR managers can leverage coaching as a powerful tool for driving employee development and organisational success.

To harness the full potential of leadership development in your organisation, contact us at connect@boldly.app. BOLDLY is a coach marketplace featuring vetted coaches who specialize in transforming team dynamics and fostering innovative cultures through leadership development coaching and courses.

About the Author:

Alexandra Lamb is an accomplished organisational development practitioner, with experience across APAC, North America, and MENA. With 20+ years in professional practice, conglomerates, and startups, she has collaborated with rapid-growth companies and industry innovators to develop leaders and high-performance teams. She is particularly experienced in talent strategy as a driver for business growth. Drawing from her experience in the fields of talent management, psychology, coaching, product development, and human-centred design, Alex prides herself on using commercial acumen to design talent solutions with true impact.