We spoke with Tiffany Price, Director of Human Resources at Blueprint Test Prep, about why she invested in coaching and how she evaluates coaching’s impact on the organization.
Q: Why did you decide to make an investment in coaching?
[Coaching] is a professional program, so it’s more of a big deal. When people get invited to be a part of it, [they] know that BluePrint is paying for the service for you. I think it’s more of an honor, as corny as that may sound. It’s a neat offering that I haven’t seen at any other companies I’ve worked for, and as long as we continue to see the success and value of it, which so far has been almost a 100% across the board for users, then it’ll continue to be part of our development strategy.
Q: What is the difference between offering coaching compared to other learning and development opportunities?
I don’t think the one-size-fits-all [model] works. We just launched a training library through our learning platform, and there are professional development courses in there. But I just don’t think people get as much from it [compared] to having a real customized plan. I like that Torch is customized to the person, it’s customized to their needs, their growth plan… It’s just that elevation of quality and consistency that’s more than what we’d be able to provide in a one-size-fits-all program.
Q: How do you know if coaching is having an impact in your organization?
The qualitative feedback I’ve received is just incredible. I mean [almost] everyone that’s in the platform raved about it and said how helpful it was. One leader said it was the highlight of her week because of the value that she’s received from it and how it’s helped her grow as a leader.
We weren’t looking at engagement as a metric initially, but we realized the quarterly engagement survey [showed changes] that were so evident after coaching… In Q4, we had 2 leaders that improved in the double digits. It’s not the only thing that we did, but you can tell that that support [had an impact]. And one of those leaders is a super user that’s had the most coaching meetings than anyone. So now [coaching] is part of our engagement strategy. We are asking: do we see anybody that may need additional support?
We added another person to the program based on engagement survey feedback this past quarter, and that’s something we’re going to be monitoring to see if [engagement] is going to be a continued metric for us.
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