The impact of coaching on well-being and engagement

Research Digest Issue 14

Ben Hicks, Research Officer

Within the coaching field there is a dearth of literature that empirically assesses the impact of coaching on coachees’ well-being and engagement. We therefore decided to undertake a Network research project that would provide credible and statistically robust data which could be used to explore this area. The project began in 2009 and after three years is now drawing to a conclusion, with the final report due to be published this Spring.

One hundred coachees were recruited for the research, and their levels of well-being and engagement before coaching were first assessed through an online questionnaire survey. After six months, on completion of their coaching, each coachee was sent a follow-up questionnaire. A third and final questionnaire was sent out another six months later. The aim was to establish a base level of engagement and well-being for each coachee before the coaching and then use this afterwards to evaluate the impact of the coaching. A longitudinaldesign of two follow-up surveys was used to assess the sustainability of any impacts.

Our intitial analysis has shown some very interesting results:

• All those who opted to undertake coaching were broadly engaged with their jobs and had relatively high levels of well-being, both at work and in general.
• At the first six month follow-up, all coachees stated that the coaching intervention had been very useful and analysis showed that their well-being and engagement had improved.
• Although the coaching intervention specifically set out to improve aspects of the coachees’ working life, analysis showed that it also had a positive knock-on effect on the coachees’ general well-being.
• Analysis of a first set of final questionnaires has showed little difference in coachees’ well-being and engagement over the six months, suggesting that these positive impacts have been sustained.

All coachees have now received their final questionnaire, and we will explore a full analysis of the results in the final report.