Sandton Coaching Centre

The effectiveness of coaching in a Corporate context: Return on investment

Many organisations question the return on investment of coaching. Understandably they ask for evidence that it works. Certain corporates are re-evaluating the way they buy coaching services and the way they use coaching internally.

The response to this comes in the traditional form of studies that 'prove' a return of over 500% or indicate that the ROI of training is increased from around 20% to 80%.

The honest answer however is that a more sophisticated measure of effectiveness is required than the traditional measures familiar in any corporate context. There is no question that we must monitor and evaluate performance and record where coaching and mentoring works and where it does not work. What we cannot expect is to use traditional methods to measure this discipline.

This would be like navigating without the knowledge that the earth is round. Where none of the crew knows how to use a sextant, or even questions why or how you would want to use one. Where the rule would be 'keep the land in sight wherever possible'.

Our aim is to explore more appropriate methods of monitoring and evaluating coaching interventions. We do this by facilitating, and not designing, your discovery of a process of evaluation that suits you and your organisation. To continue with the metaphor we also do not know how exactly how you would make use the sextant but we are experienced in some of the principles that underlie the design and use of the 'sextant'. We hope that, intuitively, this makes sense for anyone who has experienced coaching or mentoring. If you have, and it does, we would like to explore with you how we create a rigorous and robust ROI measurement process.

To play with the sextant click here