Webinar Roundup: Demonstrating Impact in HR

When it comes to demonstrating impact in HR, uptake metrics don’t go far enough. The impact of coaching, mentoring, and listening goes beyond the person immediately experiencing the initiative—it also impacts the people who work with them.

The real value of coaching and mentoring won’t show up on a dashboard after a couple of sessions—it’s about what comes out of those sessions.

Sanctus Mentoring (powered by Pushfar) helps people get the most from mentoring, giving them a structure, guidance, and support where they can set goals, track their progress, and get a reminder if they haven’t had a meeting in a month or two.

Sanctus Listening (powered by Rungway) helps you measure the impact of interventions. You can identify groups of people and track the impact of targeted intervention through surveys, sentiment changes, quantified engagement, impact on regretted leavers/retention, and performance metrics. Tying initiatives back to specific issues is key to their success.

The more you know, the more you can lean into what’s working and improve on—or let go of—what isn’t.

In our recent webinar on measuring the impact of coaching, mentoring, and listening, Valentina Passoni MSc, PCC, CPCC, TLCP, Sanctus Coach and Organizational Development Consultant was joined by Ed Johnson, Founder and CEO at PushFar, and Elizabeth Schweizer Client Success Director at Rungway, to discuss the impact of coaching, mentoring, and listening initiatives. Check out our summary below, or fill in the form to watch the replay.

Watch the webinar replay

Coaching usage metrics

Coaching usage metrics are the most common metrics companies track when implementing coaching initiatives. Here’s what Val had to say about them:

Adoption rate

The coaching adoption rate reflects the readiness of an organization to embrace coaching and if employees understand the value coaching can offer.

High adoption signals show strong organizational buy-in and perceived value by employees.

Low adoption may show there’s work to be done educating employees on the impact coaching could have.

Attendance

Attendance rates show who’s accessing coaching. This can be useful if you have a particular target audience in mind, such as returning parents.

High attendance usually correlates with a leadership team that backs and encourages coaching. It creates an environment where people feel inspired to take an hour out of their working day to invest in coaching. This creates a growth mindset culture.

The ripple effects of coaching

Coaching can lead to positive changes in workplace communication, problem solving, and leadership. 70% of organizations see an improvement in performance and 61% see greater job satisfaction.

On average, the ROI for coaching is 7x the initial investment

Partners have shared with us that coaching has lead to positive behavioral changes, self-awareness, and interpersonal skill improvements.

For even more insights on what coaching could help your business achieve, download Val’s whitepaper below:

How to get leadership onboard with your initiatives

When leadership backs your coaching initiatives, it creates a strong coaching culture. According to PwC, 60% of CEOs link upskilling to positive cultural shifts.

Coaching, mentoring, and listening are long-term games. So finding smaller milestones can be helpful.

Elizabeth shared an example from when she worked for another organization in a slightly different capacity upskilling leaders. It led to a productivity increase of 8-10% because they had the right tools and could engage with employees to help them do what they needed to do.

When you multiply that, it’s hugely beneficial to the organization. You don’t pay penalties; people feel a sense of pride in their work; they’re more engaged, and employees want to come to work.

When you really engage with people and give them the support they need, the business will experience the long-term financial returns.

The impact of employee listening

What makes Sanctus Listening unique is that it’s a fully moderated platform, so everything is treated with care. The right information gets sent to the right people.

The platform also helps you see how leaders interact. You can consider:

• What’s their tone?
• What’s their style?
• How do new leader interventions show up?

The anonymity feature is key. Some demographics are more able to get the answers they need when they post without sharing their name. For example:

Women get ⅓ fewer replies when they post something with their name attached. When they post anonymously, they get the same number of replies as men.

Often, communication is top down. You don’t get the chance to see your leader of leader of leaders. In Rungway, they can see what you’re talking about and respond with empathy, humility, and openness. So that’s what we mean by listening: listening and engaging.

As Elizabeth reminded us, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Another powerful feature is real-time sentiment assessment. It can help businesses answer questions like:

• How do people feel about things right now?
• What’s on their minds?
• What kind of themes/topics are coming up?

These questions help leaders spot gaps where support through coaching or mentoring initiatives could be useful.

How mentoring affects employee engagement

For program managers doing the heavy lifting, Sanctus Mentoring’s automation features aim to reduce how many spreadsheets they juggle.

When we look at how it’s applied and the benefits for an organization, there are a variety of responses. For instance, mentoring can help with employee engagement, retention rates, DEI, community building, and so much more.

For mentees, seeing someone role model what they’d like to do can be hugely beneficial. Mentees have someone they can identify with, talk to, learn from the experiences of, and then consider how to apply those learnings to their own career.

It benefits mentors, too. Sharing knowledge and experience is powerful. It can give them a sense of satisfaction seeing someone else develop and achieve success because of their knowledge.

How to measure the success of initiatives

To measure the impact of any initiative, it’s important to collect data at the start. That way, you can clearly measure its impact throughout the organization and track if things are going in the right direction.

Consider what your objectives for any coaching, mentoring, or listening initiative are. Choose up to three to keep things specific.

What those metrics are will differ between companies because every company is different.

Webinar questions

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions during the webinar! Here are the answers in case you’re interested too.

Do you have any case studies from client organizations?

We sure do! Check out our FitFlop case study video below.

How do you know if an organization is ready for coaching?

To assess if an organization is ready for coaching, consider the following indicators:

1. Leadership buy-in – Leaders should support and actively advocate for coaching, as their commitment influences organizational culture and engagement with coaching programs.
2. Clear objectives and alignment – The organization should have specific goals for coaching, such as improving leadership capabilities, enhancing team dynamics, or supporting personal development. Alignment between these goals and overall business objectives is crucial for maximizing coaching impact.

A bonus indicator!

Openness to feedback and growth – A culture that encourages learning, feedback, and self-improvement is more likely to embrace coaching, as employees and leaders must be open to self-reflection and personal growth.

What types of challenges are coaching and mentoring best suited to address?

Mentoring is typically seen as a way to address challenges around knowledge gaps, employee career progression, inclusivity, and succession planning. With mentoring, the emphasis is on knowledge and experience transfer. This can be professional knowledge, highly technical skills and experience, or personal experience (such as lived experiences, like women returning from maternity leave, or LGBTQ+ professionals coming out in the workplace).

Coaching, meanwhile, is well-suited for addressing several types of organizational and individual challenges, such as:

• Leadership development – Coaching helps leaders develop critical skills such as emotional intelligence, decision-making, and strategic thinking, preparing them for greater responsibilities.
• Performance improvement – Coaching supports employees in overcoming performance barriers and enhancing productivity by focusing on personalized strategies and goal-setting.
• Culture and change management – During times of change, coaching fosters resilience and adaptability, helping employees adjust and align with new organizational values or structures. Coaching can also have a major impact on growth mindset and resilience building, helping employees navigate change.

By providing opportunities for personal and professional growth, coaching and mentoring increase job satisfaction and reduce turnover.

What initial steps can HR teams take to build a case for coaching and mentoring?

1. Look at success metrics – Working out how they impact organizational performance is key. This could be talent attrition, employee engagement, inclusivity, etc. There are dozens of studies about the quantitative and qualitative value these bring. And for the investment required, compared to the potential return, it really starts to become a no-brainer. Particularly if you look at the cost of recruitment, cost of poor performance, etc.
2. Identify business needs, objectives, and goals – Pinpoint specific challenges or strategic goals that coaching and mentoring can address, such as improving leadership capacity or enhancing employee engagement.
3. Gather feedback data – Use employee surveys, exit interviews, and performance metrics to illustrate areas where coaching and mentoring could provide value, such as engagement or leadership gaps.
4. Define success – Get clear on what success could look like within your organization so that an Organizational Development Consultant or experienced Coach can support in designing the right solution for your organization.
5. Engage leadership advocates – Identify leaders who support coaching and mentoring, as their advocacy can lend credibility and help secure buy-in from other stakeholders.

What differentiates Sanctus from other platforms in the employee listening space?

Sanctus Listening is a unique balance of a platform and a service. We call it listening, but it’s really about dialog and creating a space for it at scale throughout organizations.

This is beneficial, particularly in our hybrid worlds, and for large companies with lots of disconnected workforces either through multiple sites, ways of working, shift patterns, etc. Companies get more of a chance to engage with employees, while leadership gains direct, individual connections across an organization.

Sanctus Listening is a psychologically safe space for employees to raise their ideas and challenges. Because we’re a third party, we’re trusted. People come to use with all sorts of questions because they know that space is there for them.

It’s a fully moderated platform, so if something requires a specialist response, or it’s of a sensitive nature, it’s treated appropriately and with care. This helps engagement in terms of conversations and the way people interact with it, because the right information gets to the right people.

What are the pros and cons of internal vs external coaches?

External coaches offers more granular support than an in-house coach. In-house coaches tend to focus more on workplace goals, whereas we focus on a “wholebeing” model, which includes supporting someone’s emotional and mental health alongside their working goals.

What training does someone need to be an effective coach?

To be an effective coach, training should emphasize developing core coaching skills and a solid foundation in understanding human behavior, communication, and goal-setting. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) website is a valuable resource for locating accredited and trusted trainers and training providers, offering guidance to help you work toward accreditation.

Can a line manager be an effective coach without qualifications?

Yes, a line manager can be an effective coach without formal coaching qualifications. While training and qualifications are essential for a formal career as a Professional Coach, effective coaching relies on core competencies that many line managers may already possess or can develop through coaching skills training. Key qualities include:

1. Active listening – Paying attention to employees’ concerns and aspirations to understand their needs deeply.
2. Empathy and emotional intelligence – Recognizing and responding to emotional cues to build trust and create a supportive environment.
3. Asking open-ended questions – Encouraging reflection and problem-solving by prompting employees to explore their own answers.
4. Goal setting and accountability – Helping employees set achievable goals and supporting them in tracking progress.

If you have questions about how our initiatives could help you solve common business challenges, check out our solutions page or get in touch.