Human resources professionals’ perceptions of executive coaching: Efficacy, benefits and return on investment

Abstract

Objectives:Human resources (HR) professionals represent a large and relatively untapped source of experiential knowledge about executive coaching. The purpose of the study was to record the perceptions of these HR professionals.Design:The study was a survey design.Methods:The practitioners completed structured interviews to elicit their perceptions of the overall efficacy of executive coaching, the specific benefits derived and drawbacks experienced from the programmes, their estimates of the cost/benefit of the programmes, and their interest in using executive coaching in the future.Results:As a group, the 17 participants were responsible for more than 1000 individual executive coaching programmes and $15.4 million of expenditure on executive coaching in the preceding two years. The practitioners indicated strong support for the use of coaching in the future, and all rated their programmes as at least moderately successful. The practitioners also identified a large range of benefits for the individual executives and a smaller range for the organisations. The two most commonly expressed drawbacks were difficulty with executives making time for sessions and the expense of executive coaching. Although the practitioners indicated that benefits exceeded costs, only one practitioner indicated completing formal measurement of return on investment.Conclusions:Discussion included consideration of the pressure for more structured and measurable intervention approaches, and the influence such approaches may have on the efficacy of the programmes themselves.