The most recent surveys show that coaching and mentoring is used by 86% of organisations*, with an impressive

49%* of them rating it as the most effective talent management enabling activity. However, only 3%* of

organisations rate their talent development activities overall as very effective.

How can this be the case in the current economic climate? Surely it is critical that you make the most your

investment to ensure that your development activities become at least part of the 3% that are rated as very

effective. We have tackled this issue several times.

 

One of our clients, a global professional services firm, was keen to develop their leadership capability and move

towards a performance culture by creating coaching champions. However, they knew that to achieve their goals it

was critical to gain top level partner endorsement for their chosen strategy and by linking it directly to the wider

organisational strategy.

 

We worked with them to understand the exact leadership behaviours they wished to develop in order to achieve

their organisational strategy of a performance culture. We then incorporated these behaviours into a bespoke

performance coaching skills development programme specifically aimed at their partner population.

Crucially, we handpicked participants who were viewed as key stakeholders amongst that population. The results

were dramatic. The evaluation demonstrated that we achieved 80% positive** rating that the firm cared about an

individual's development (a key strategic goal). The evaluation also produced scores of 76%** and 73% positive**

for direct business benefits and indirect business benefits respectively.

 

Another client, a global utilities company, already had an active coaching culture which they wanted to continue

but were spending huge sums on external coaches and had no way of evaluating their impact or effectiveness.

They wanted to develop a highly effective internal coaching pool but also wanted to develop ways of protecting

their investment by ensuring the quality of internal coaching was as high as possible.

 

Having understood what they wanted to achieve, we delivered our Certificate in Coach-mentoring programme to

develop an internal pool of accredited coaches. The process took six months but the 12 coaches that were

created resulted in a direct cost saving of £171,500 in the first year alone.

 

We subsequently chose key stakeholders from the first cohort to embark on our ‘Coach as Supervisor’

programme. This has demonstrated their commitment to protect the organisation’s investment into training

internal coaches, enhancing and professionalising the quality of coaching delivered internally. It also

demonstrated to other key stakeholders that there are robust processes for coach support, development,

engagement and management.

 

In both these examples, working with us has enabled those with responsibility for procuring coaching and

mentoring services to not only maximise the return on their investment but also to be one of the few that could

rate their talent management strategies as very effective.

 

To find out more about how The OCM can help you manage your investment in coaching and mentoring, please

contact a member of our Business Development Team on 01869 338989.

 

* All figures come from the CIPD's 2011 Learning and Talent Development Survey

** All figures from The OCM's 180 Degree Feedback and Benchmarking Tool