Coaching Should Be The New Free Lunch in Tech

I’ve always wanted to help people feel happier, that’s the simplest way to describe it. When I was little, I wanted to be a teacher; it was my career aspiration for many years. Then I discovered how much teachers earn (judge my greed/scarcity mentality, if you feel inclined) and switched the fantasy to therapist. But therapists are pretty isolated and so I continued my goldilocks career search until I found Human Resources. HR seemed like a happy combination of getting to help people and work with a lot of people at once.

HR doesn’t always have the best reputation for being in service to employees. But in the most exciting companies, that is changing. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s the competition for talent in tech that suddenly makes keeping employees happy a sound fiscal approach. Maybe it’s a sign of advancing moral systems spurred by culture-setters like Google. Maybe a combination. Or something different altogether. But suddenly, “humanizing the workplace” is a hot topic. I am now in the enviable position of exploring ways to operationalize that buzz phrase. This piece is written to share a promising approach in that endeavor.

Executive coaching is fairly established at large companies, and widely recognized as a critical component of effective leadership and management. However, it is quite unusual for a tech startup to offer coaching. Even more unusual is to make it available to all employees, not just leaders or “high-potential” employees. This is what we do at Keen IO. Why? Our stance, which research findings support, is that coaching brings a long list of benefits including increased productivity, goal accomplishment, and workplace well-being. We rely on all of our employees to identify business needs and opportunities. Given the findings about the benefits of coaching, why wouldn’t we want all our employees to have access to a resource that enhances productivity? Plus, we think of every single person at Keen as being high-potential, that’s why we hired them.

What is coaching?

Coaching helps us discover more effective and satisfying ways of moving through the world.

Although the term coaching is applied to several use cases, I am referring to the type of coaching that focuses on “striving for growth of the coachee by providing the tools, skills, and opportunities they need to develop themselves and become more effective” [1].

Coaching helps employees get unstuck, see situations in new ways to expand their problem-solving abilities, and access new tools often underdeveloped in emerging leaders. It also creates an improved sense of ownership over one’s work.

Coaching focuses on achievement of goals and direction towards action. It is not therapy, mentorship, or advice giving. Coaches don’t offer solutions to employee problems, which is why they are able to support people in every team/industry. Rather, coaches ask questions that lead the client to recognize and evaluate their own feelings and and thoughts about a particular area of interest without being directive.

How is it executed?

At Keen, we built an internal team of coaches to make coaching available to every single employee who wants it. 91% of our workforce is currently opted-in to the coaching program. A single in-house coach can support 40–100 employees (depending on frequency of coaching and duration of session) and still have time to support other key HR functions; more on this later.

Our employees typically meet with their coach once or twice per month. A typical session is 50 minutes and might take place in person or on a video call. Coaching is confidential; we use white noise machines in the rooms to make people more comfortable. Agendas and goals are not set by coaches, clients can choose to pursue whatever topic they see fit. Coaching is not restricted to work-related development areas. While we start with an initial intake session to evaluate areas for focus, goal-attainment results are not shared outside of the coaching relationship. Conversations may range from conflicts with teammates, personal development goals, desire to learn a new skill, anxiety about changes in the workplace, personal relationships, etc.

Why are we so loose with these guidelines? Our philosophy is that if employees are working on becoming better versions of themselves (whether via relationships, coping skills, communication skills, exploring a personal passion or life-goals) we benefit. If they are discovering increased clarity about who they are, what they love, and how to be effective in pursuit of their goals, we benefit.

What does the research say about the benefits of coaching?

Research studies have shown coaching provides work-based outcomes including:

• Increased goal accomplishment (Fischer & Beimers, 2009)
• Professional growth (McGuf-fin & Obonyo, 2010)
• Improved professional relationships (Kombarakaran, Yang, Baker, & Fernandes, 2008)
• Greater managerial flexibility (Jones, Rafferty, & Griffin, 2006)
• Increased productivity (Olivero, Bane, & Kopelman, 1997)
• Improved resilience and workplace well-being (Grant, Curtayne, & Burton, 2009)

The biggest benefit we’ve experienced at Keen

True to the research, we’ve found coaching helps Keen employees determine priorities, navigate roadblocks, obtain clarity on needed decisions, and practice vocalizing their needs. That last one is very important if you want your employees to tell you when they are unhappy or thinking of looking for a new job. The biggest benefit we’ve experienced with coaching is it’s impact on retention and recruiting. Not just because we’re able to intervene earlier when a person is becoming dissatisfied with their role. When asked, “which employee benefit is most important to you?’ our coaching program consistently receives the top ranking. We have the usual fantastic perks of tech including remote-friendly culture, flexible schedules, a personal learning and development budget, unlimited PTO, etc. Despite these perks, it is the dedicated space for self-development that employees rate as most valued. Apparently, having an employer invest in your growth as a human makes a big impact on an employee’s willingness to stay put.

Having a unique perk in the competition for top Bay Area and/or Engineering talent is a major boost to our recruiting and retention figures. You can read more about the benefits of strong engagement here. Why does it work so well? My guess is the combination of a strong job market and millennial culture creates a situation where people are no longer willing to serve a company’s mission if it doesn’t align with their own life goals. Not for long at least. Counter-intuitively, offering a benefit that is all about helping the employee discover their own passions and purpose actually helps create engagement and retention.

Additional organizational needs met by coaches

Once you’ve made the decision to offer coaching as a benefit to employees, the next question is whether to hire an internal coach, train an existing HR employee, or hire an external coach. Given the benefits, any of these options will bring value to the organization. We found that creating an internal coaching team not only saved money compared to contracting external coaches, it lessened our need for other functions, including:

• Mid-managers. Keen coaches provide a space for thought-partnership and problem-solving that often falls to first-line managers. We’ve found the traditional manager role creates more bureaucracy and hierarchy than we want in the organization, but don’t want people to miss out on having someone to talk to when they feel stuck, unsure of how to prioritize goals, etc. Coaching fills that gap. Plus, all our coaches are trained in being great listeners and helping people generate solutions…a skill not always strongly developed in new managers.
• Performance management. We’ve designed our performance feedback process at Keen to be as lightweight as possible, while also gathering honest, actionable feedback that recipients can use immediately. The coaching team facilitates this process to ensure people are receiving real feedback in a safe, non-violent communication structure.
• Employee Relations. While an employee relations function will always be a necessity to handle complaints or operational questions, the coaching programs serves as a place of first triage to intercept many of the dissatisfactions, conflicts, confusions or questions that can often overwhelm an employee relations function.
• Conflict resolution. In cases where an interpersonal relationship can’t be resolved through coaching supported direct communication, having an internal coaching team is an ideal resource for handling ad hoc needs for mediation. Rather than needing to hire an expensive external consultant or hand the task to an ill-equipped manager, the coaching staff is available immediately.
• OD Consultants. Similar to engaging an Organization Development consultant, the coaching team is able to anonymously aggregate coaching topics into common themes as would occur during an organizational health OD intervention. For example, our coaching team identified multiple clients grappling with a lack of role clarity that was impacting their ability to operate effectively. Rather than deal with this at an individual-level which is what would have happened if we’d been using contracted external consultants, we were able to address this as a systemic organizational need. As a result, we implemented a Responsibilities Matrix program that provided a tremendous amount of role clarity and decision-making authority. Thus, in addition to helping individuals navigate and cope with inevitable organizational quirks, you receive valuable system insights to help the whole organization level-up based on phenomenological data.

To most of the tech world, Keen IO is a startup building powerful analytics APIs for companies to collect, analyze, and visualize their data. But I joined Keen IO because at its core, it is a human development company. Employees join and stay to self-actualize and grow; to seek their best version of themselves. It’s been a true joy to work with Jennifer Akullian to create a coaching program that helps already extraordinary individuals move toward their full potential. And to validate the organizational benefits to investing in people. Keen is a model for humanizing tech, startups and hopefully the new norm in workplace culture.