Twilio leveraged BetterUp to boost performance by up to 47%

Twilio is one of the world’s fastest-growing organizations, on a mission to create a business that can take on any challenge that comes its way. A critical part of that journey involved creating leaders out of employees at every level of the business — a focus area that required an entirely new approach to the way the company trained its employees and managers, with a focus on personalization and sustainability.

In order to achieve its mission, Twilio needed to create a workforce that was focused and committed, maintaining high levels of performance even as the organization changed rapidly.

Twilio engaged BetterUp to provide its leaders with Whole Person™ coaching, ultimately rolling the program out to all 8,000+ employees to help them more seamlessly navigate Twilio’s stage of hypergrowth. The company partnered with BetterUp to map Whole Person metrics to desired behaviors that drive the company’s goal of “maintaining Twilio Magic,” as well as to the organization’s expectations for leadership, creating a concrete framework for the impact of coaching.

Since implementation, Twilio members have completed tens of thousands of coaching sessions that have helped them become more effective Twilions.

By offering BetterUp Whole Person™ coaching to all employees, Twilio has seen a significant impact on the key indicators of the organization’s ability to perform at a high level, including employee performance, likelihood of receiving promotions, and employee tenure. 

An analysis performed by Twilio and BetterUp demonstrated that employees who received BetterUp coaching were 32% more likely to be rated highly on their performance reviews, while coached managers were 47% more likely to receive high performance ratings than their peers who did not take part in coaching. 

Additionally, Twilio members saw elevated rates of promotion compared to their non-coached counterparts, with coaching increasing the likelihood of a promotion by 32% for coached employees and 36% for coached managers.

Coaching has also been demonstrated to impact employee loyalty — a crucial factor in Twilio’s aim to create a differentiated employee experience. Those who worked with a BetterUp Coach were 5X more likely to stay with the company than non-coached employees, with coached managers and execs seeing a retention rate 6.75X higher than their non-coached peers.

Supporting the DEI journey through BetterUp

As Twilio makes progress on its high-growth, high-performance journey, the organization also recognizes the critical importance of supporting every employee. That’s why Twilio is also on a mission to become an antiracist company – an aspiration that has been supported by the company’s work with BetterUp.

Twilio has taken an intentional approach to the career growth and development of its Black and LatinX employees, providing them with unlimited BetterUp coaching, which has led to dramatic increases in dimensions such as self-compassion, self-awareness, and focus. 

This work has also sparked growth and development: The analysis demonstrated that after taking part in the BetterUp offering, Black and LatinX employees were 30% more likely to receive high performance reviews, and 79% more likely to receive a promotion than non-coached peers. What’s more, these individuals were also 4.6X more likely to stay with the company. 

Drive future-readiness using precision development

These outcomes were driven by improvements in areas like strategic planning, focus, self-compassion, and overall well-being, which all saw double-digit increases following the implementation of BetterUp. For Twilio, these shifts have come together to create a higher-performing, committed workforce that’s making progress on the company’s mission to build a future-ready organization.