Research and statistics regarding the effectiveness of Coaching

A Study of  4000 companies in February 2000 reported that the top five ways coaching impacted organisational performance were:

Improved individual performance

Improved profit, client service and competitiveness

Developing people for the next level

Better relationships between management and staff

Improved staff retention

This flows through into a ROI of 5.7 times the cost of coaching according to one study of 43 senior executives working with coaches between 1996 and 2000. Other studies report a range of ROI numbers between 5 and 10 times investment. 

(International Coach Federation (ICF) study, reported in Training and Developement, February 2000, quoted in GreenJ and  Grant,A M (2003) Solution-Focussed Coaching, Pearson Education Ltd:London, p2.  Maximising the impact of Executive coaching:Behaviour change,Organisation Outcomes and ROI The Manchester review 2001  . Braddick, C. ROI of Executive Coaching: Useful Information or a Distraction? published on www.ukhrd.com, Nov 2003 p3.)

The experience is widespread of going on training courses, learning valuable new material, but reverting to old habits once back in the workplace.  A Canadian study found that a managerial training programme raised productivity by 22.4% in those who received training alone. but half of the group (randomly allocated) who received the training plus eight sessions of individual coaching to translate the training into specific personal and team actions experienced a productivity increase of 88.0%. This and other research would indicate that to send someone on an expensive training course without providing coaching on return to embed the learning (whether by a partner, colleague, or external coach) wastes a quantity of the potential learning and implementation gain.

(Olivero, G., Bane, K. D. and Kopleman, R.E. (1997), Executive Coaching as a transfer of training tool; effects on productivity in public agency, Public Personnel Management, Winter Vol 26(4) pp461-469)

The UK Defence Aviation Repair Agency (DARA) tackled the problem of time delays in turnaround of the main rotor gearbox for a Lynx helicopter, first by top-down management, then by arranging coaching for the engineers on the shop floor to be encouraged to find their own solutions. The job historically took 52 weeks. Driving the task hard from the top reduced the turnaround time to 13 weeks. Giving reponsibility and coaching support to the engineers themselves enabled them to find radical new solutions which took the time down to 16 days.

(Green and Grant, ibid, p 27.)