Coaching: The Most Core and Valued Capability in HR

“Change has never been this fast, and it will never be this slow again.”

This quote by Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, has never resonated more than it has during the current pandemic. Companies that pushed back on remote work for multiple decades had to embrace remote work with arms wide open overnight. Deskbound workers suddenly became digital nomads working from wherever they had digital access. Educational institutions adapted their curriculums for online delivery in practically no time. Workers all over the world, across industries and geographies, rapidly learned new skills and adopted new behaviors to keep businesses and livelihoods running. Amid all this change, HR teams around the world were charged with catalyzing this change seamlessly and effectively for the workforce, while coping with changes in their own roles and personal lives.

The pandemic has indeed been a boot camp for HR capability upskilling. It seems timely to take a look at the current state of HR capabilities and get a pulse on how HR is doing. Where has HR developed the strongest muscle in terms of capabilities? What developmental support does HR need and want? Is HR feeling valued and supported through the onerous changes it is helping its organizations to navigate? Let’s find out!

Our Global HR Capability Project

As a quick refresher from my last article, our Global HR Capability Project is a rapidly growing treasure trove of data on HR capabilities with over 5,000 responses from HR practitioners around the world. As part of the project, we’ve deployed an HR Capability Assessment designed to measure HR leaders’ experience, knowledge, and reputation in key areas of HR capability. The assessment provides a means for individuals and organizations to assess and accelerate critical capabilities, and the responses give us great insights into the broad state of HR capabilities.

If you haven’t heard already, our Global HR Capability Assessment is now open to all HR professionals. Individuals can take the assessment to get a snapshot of their capability strengths and potential areas for growth. HR leaders can use the assessment to evaluate the capability strengths of their teams. We highly recommend you take the assessment today!

Coaching Capabilities for the Win

Our capability assessment data shows good news. Out of over 90 HR capabilities, the capability that rates the highest across our respondent pool of over 5,000 HR professionals is—coaching. HR professionals are really good at helping individuals improve their performance. As you can see in the chart below, 40% of HR professionals rate themselves as world class or experts on this capability.

Interestingly, the second-highest scoring capability also relates to coaching of leaders. 30% of HR professionals rate themselves at the highest levels of expertise in coaching leaders to improve leadership effectiveness and organizational impact.

Source: The Josh Bersin Company, 2021

We have validated in our research that coaching and development is indeed the most successful way to help people grow in their careers and unleash their potential. This is the opposite of a command-and-control approach to managing performance, and focuses on helping individuals pivot to a personal best mindset, rather than a competitive mindset. Coaching is personalized and development-focused, making it even more important in times when every employee is dealing with unprecedented change both personally and professionally, during a pandemic. Coaching surfacing as the winning capability in our large global pool of HR professionals is worth celebrating, because this is in fact one of the capabilities that organizations need the most.

HR Teams Also Greatly Desire Coaching

As part of the Capability Project, we also ask HR professionals to indicate the development opportunities they consider most important for their careers. Voila! Coaching and mentoring surfaced as the developmental opportunity that HR considers most important for their own career growth. What does this tell us?

Source: The Josh Bersin Company, 2021

HR professionals understand and believe in one-to-one human connection. They often have backgrounds in psychology, education, or sociology—and they see the company as a network of individuals. So their deep understanding of the value of one-to-one coaching (for individuals, leaders, and themselves) is core to their perspective

HR is charged with the responsibility of shaping the experience of every employee in the organization. This involves cultivating organizational capabilities that can help every employee thrive. Among other things, this implies cultivating coaching capabilities across the organization—to help individuals perform better, and to help leaders become better coaches and mentors to amplify individual and business performance, while maximizing talent outcomes like development, engagement, retention, and the holistic employee experience. Most certainly, this data tells us that we no longer need to sell the business case for coaching and development. HR knows it.

What this also tells us is, that HR sees the value of coaching and development for its own career growth and has developed strong capabilities to extend and deliver the benefits of coaching and mentoring to individuals and leaders across the organization. In essence, HR is now the champion of coaching and development—truly steering its mission of helping every individual thrive.

HR’s Growth Opportunities and Impact: Looking Up

Here’s a recap of the story so far! HR values coaching as the most important driver of development and career growth, and has built strong capabilities to provide it to the organization. So, how does HR feel about it?

Our data tells us that HR knows it’s doing well, and recognizes how valuable its contributions are to the business. More than half of our respondents (52%) believe they are driving important impact and adding tremendous value through their roles in the organization.

Source: The Josh Bersin Company, 2021

Career growth opportunities also seem to be looking up for HR. 50% of our respondents feel their organization is a good place for them to grow their careers, and one third rate their organization as an excellent place offering many opportunities to develop and advance in their careers.

Source: The Josh Bersin Company, 2021

Well done, HR!

This is all good news, especially during a pandemic. There’s still work to be done, and there will always be considering the heroic role HR plays in enabling organizational success. But this is worth pausing, acknowledging, and celebrating. Everyone needs to continuously upskill and evolve their capabilities, but we’ve come a long way, and it’s worth popping the champagne and taking a bow. Well done, HR!

Learn more with these resources:

• Corporate members of The Josh Bersin Company can take advantage of capability accelerators, organizational audits, advisory services, and workshops to help maximize talent and plan development strategies. To find out about our membership offering or how to use the assessment within your organization, send an email to info@bersinpartners.com.
• Watch Amy Farner’s video detailing the Global Capability Assessment and in-depth discussion.
• Take the Global HR Capability Assessment, if you haven’t already.
• Visit our website to learn more about the Global HR Capability Project.