Introduction

The world seems to be full of people offering coaching services. There’s well-being coaches, life coaches, sports coaches, business coaches – and that’s just the obvious ones. But how do you determine if they have any potential value to you and your company?

There has been an explosion in people offering coaching services in recent years for a variety of reasons. For example, the massive growth in technology is replacing many jobs that were previously undertaken by people. More people are looking at alternative roles and careers. The ever-growing demands of employees and the highly competitive race for talent acquisition and retention are creating a greater demand for people development within the workplace. The fact is the business world is becoming ever more competitive with profit, performance and share growth driving company managers to seek competitive advantage and ways to improve productivity. A succession of stock market crashes and the resulting recessions have resulted in many people losing their jobs and questioning the whole ethos of company loyalty. The new workforce sees itself as individuals and not employees. This places greater emphasis on getting a competitive edge, sharpening up skills and getting yourself noticed. This combination of factors has fuelled demand for services which improve individual and corporate productivity and upskilling driven both by companies and by individuals.