BetterUp partners with Josh Bersin Academy on Coaching at Scale

By Karen Lai

February 16, 2021 - 6 min read

The Josh Bersin Academy delivers future-focused learning to prepare HR leaders to meet 21st century workplace challenges. In partnership with BetterUp, the academy launched Coaching at Scale, a high priority topic for HR leaders during a time of constant change and uncertainty.

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Why are progressive HR leaders interested in Coaching at Scale?

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“Today, a key to business success is the ability to adapt quickly. To do so, companies need employees who can learn on the job and take on different roles as needed. One-on-one coaching is one of the most effective ways of helping employees cope with the constant change we’re all facing. Without a strong culture and supporting technology, delivering coaching at scale is very difficult,” said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and dean of the Josh Bersin Academy.

As one of the world’s leading HR and workplace industry analysts, Josh Bersin was amongst the first to predict the role coaching would play in delivering hyper-personalized development, designed into the flow of work. As a Science Board Advisor to BetterUp, Josh is intimately familiar with the impact of BetterUp’s approach, which combines world-class coaching, AI-driven technology and evidence-based practices, on business outcomes like productivity, wellbeing and leadership effectiveness.

The Coaching at Scale course, which is based on BetterUp’s research and first-hand experiences from HR leaders,, offers both a philosophical look at how the mindset around one-on-one development is shifting, as well as a practical look at how we can best scale coaching across large organizations in today’s uncertain and highly remote environment. The course features BetterUp behavioral experts, including Dr, Damian Vaughn on building a coaching culture, and Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman on the powerful impact of coaching to drive lasting behavior change and cultivate creativity.

Participants will also benefit by learning from HR trailblazers in adopting coaching at scale, such as Gretchen Stroud from Hilton, Larry McAllister at NetApp and Summer Davies at Mars Inc.

The program’s first run in October 2020 had over 500 participants from leading companies around the world. Participants were highly engaged in the content, which includes four field manuals - Shifting Mindsets, Changing Behavior, Building Ecosystems, and Empowering Team. The Academy tracked over 6000 interactions between learners. The cohort-based program will run again this coming April.

Why are progressive HR leaders interested in Coaching at Scale?

Over the past months, we’ve seen companies make the kind of transitions that used to take years. Companies can no longer count on predictability. Instead they are leaning heavily on the adaptability, creativity, and agility of their people at all levels. That means team leaders and managers all across the organization are more important than ever for guiding, aligning, motivating, enabling -- and coaching -- the people on the frontlines of change.

In a group discussion about business challenges that coaching at scale could address, three key imperatives surfaced from HR leaders across several Fortune 500 companies:

“Fighting work burnout and wellbeing of our workforce, coaching should and can further scale these efforts”, said one participant on the current mental health crisis.

“We have the desire and need to expand the openness of diversity through coaching around bias, trust, transparency and having a growth mindset. We don't want to just give information, we want to put it into action.”, said another HR leader on the need to go beyond knowledge and training to drive real change in diversity and inclusion.

“As we need our leaders to be at the front of understanding what is required in the future and role model the newly required behaviors it makes sense to support them with coaching. And they can then help their teams in internalizing the new normal in terms of new behaviors, ways of working”, said a learning and development professional on the need to support managers at the front lines.

These participants are recognizing that in this environment of rapid change and ongoing uncertainty, each person’s development needs are unique, and the needs change day-to-day. Coaching provides the personalized learning and support to meet each person’s specific development needs, when and how they need it. And our data shows that this approach works. BetterUp Member data demonstrates that coaching can improve individual performance by 104% and team performance by 137%.

Visit Josh Bersin Academy to get more scheduling information about Coaching at Scale, which will run several times throughout 2021.

Ready to explore coaching at scale for your company? Try a demo of BetterUp.

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Published February 16, 2021