How Can We Build a Business Case for Coaching?

Coaching is an international and unregulated industry, meaning anyone can label themselves a coach. As a result, there is now an abundance of coaching solutions, all of which argue the effectiveness of transformation coaching services from provider A to provider B. These multiple claims, often based on little more than numbers plucked from the air, add to the confusion about coaching and its value or efficacy.

The scientific evidence over the past thirty years has confirmed coaching is a powerful tool for supporting behavioral change. Multiple research studies have provided compelling evidence (1) and the ability of coaching to support behavioral change is now widely accepted. What has been harder to evidence is the ‘return on the investment’, more correctly described as the commercial case for coaching. Multiple studies have claimed wildly differing numbers for ROI, with unbelievable claims of x7, x8 or 9.

How we build business cases for coaching at EZRA

At EZRA we continue to work with our clients individually to help them build the commercial case for their unique organization. We recognize that each cohort of coachees, say senior leaders in a Fast-Moving Consumer Goods company or cancer care clinicians in a Children's Hospital, are different. Similarly, each business’s aspirations for coaching are different; some want to improve sales, others want to improve wellbeing. As a result, one simple metric for displaying ROI does not work.

A great place to start with any change program is Stakeholder Mapping. Who are the key decision makers? What are their current views? What types of evidence do they look towards to inform their decisions? What does each see as the current challenges facing their business?

Identifying key stakeholders will be followed by engaging them, through interviews, surveys and workshops to listen to views and better understand their priorities and perspectives.

With this deeper understanding in place, it's possible to start crafting a business case. At this stage it can be helpful to explore the perspectives of others in your industry who have used coaching: What was their experience? What lessons or insights have they learnt? What impact did they see? Engaging through professional networks or professional bodies can help in deepening your understanding of sector specific issues, as well as the costs and the benefits.

From here the next step will be about understanding how coaching will fit with the wider People Strategy in your business: When will you use coaching? When is mentoring, training, disciplinary or appraisals the appropriate intervention?

Rarely do organizations consider the ROI of training or their mentoring programs, but if this is required, evaluation models may be helpful in guiding you through an evaluation. However, it’s important to think about how coaching is different.

The evidence from coaching research suggests it seems to bring ripple effects, helping employees change their style of communication and engagement across the organization. Whilst these short-term behavioral changes can be offered, there’s also opportunity to build long-term potential with coaching too. This might include delivering wellbeing and performance gains, which may feed through to reduced absence and turnover - this might however be harder to track over time, or separate out from other factors such as skills shortages or economic growth leading to higher turnover.

Given all of these factors it can be hard to build a simple mathematical model which captures all the factors that are important to your organization. But at EZRA we are keen to work with each client to help them understand their unique challenges and put in place a program to measure and evaluate the impact of coaching on their key variables.

Jonathan Passmore is SVP EZRA and Professor of coaching and behavioral change at Henley Business School, UK

References

(1) Athanasopoulos & Dopson, 2017)

(2) Passmore, J., and Tee, D. (2021). Feedback and evaluation in coaching. In J.

(3) Passmore (ed.), The Coaches’ Handbook, pp.355–66. Abingdon: Routledge.