An increasing number of employers are using coaching for their training and development, a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows.
The finding comes despite tighter training budgets and was not expected because of the current economic climate, the organisation claims.
The majority of coaching is for leadership development and performance management, therefore affecting a small number of individuals, John McGurk, a CIPD adviser, says.
Furthermore, 70 per cent of survey respondents admit they have maintained or increased their coaching spend.
“We would expect coaching to adapt to a more performance-based model to make use of the changing climate,” Mr McGurk asserts.
According to the CIPD report Taking the Temperature of Coaching, only three per cent of organisations measure the impact of coaching against return on investment.
Digital methods of training in the workplace have been embraced by a number of businesses, a poll conducted by Video Arts recently found.
Many freelance coaches I have met (and some managers with formal coaching training) are trained by organisations steeped in the pop psychology end of coaching, where it’s nothing short of a blatant infringement of the coachee’s personal rights for coaching to be “performance based”. Their view is that all coaching should be non-directive and client-centred, whereas the organisation is naturally looking for improved deliverables as a result of spending money on this service.