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A coaching initiative at HSBC Insurance in Singapore

Context


The insurance activities of the HSBC Group employ over 6,000 staff who provide a full range of life, general, medical insurance and retirement benefits products and services to individual and corporate clients in 35 countries and territories. HSBC Insurance (Singapore) Pte Limited is one of the smallest insurance subsidiaries in the HSBC Group, employing 200 full time staff. It decided to introduce a coaching initiative in 2005 to support performance management in the organisation, providing training in coaching skills for its senior managers.

As part of a global strategy, known as “Managing for Growth”, the environment in which HSBC Insurance operated was becoming much more results oriented. The programme was therefore designed to help managers and in turn their staff to achieve more stretching targets. It was expected to encourage more effective ways of communicating, encouraging managers to ask rather than tell, and to support their staff in thinking things through themselves rather than expecting always to be told what to do.

The programme


Coach training was offered to eighteen middle and senior managers who were the direct reports to the CEO or were in the level immediately below. No one was made to undertake the training – this was an invitation rather than a requirement – and each was given a trial coaching session to get a taste of what was involved before they made a commitment to it. Each then followed a programme delivered by Results Coaching Systems. This began with a three day workshop, followed by eight weekly hour long telephone sessions and ending with a one and a half hour workshop. Each coach in training subsequently worked with one volunteer coachee, typically coaching them to achieve one personal and two work objectives.

At the end of the training twelve went through an assessment, seven successfully achieving certification as level 1 coaches. This pass rate was considered acceptable, since the assessment was acknowledged as being rigorous. Moreover, the value of the programme was seen as being in managers developing coaching skills rather than in being assessed as being competent to be professional coaches in their own right.

Those coaches who completed the training are now about to start a second round of coaching practice, with one more volunteer coachee each. This will give them an opportunity to further polish their coaching skills. Whilst they will have no formal support in reflecting on their learning here, they will have access to telephone support if they need it and there is now a network of managers trained as coaches which each can also fall back on for support. There has also been one “lunch and share” session where those who had trained as coaches were able to reflect on the application of their skills.

Effectiveness


An evaluation study was commissioned from Results Coaching Systems to assess the impact the programme had had on the coaches and coachees involved and to identify any changes and impacts on the business. Those who had trained as coaches reported that that they now felt more valued by their team members, that they were more confident in their management of staff and that coaching was fostering effective relationships with others in the organisation. Their responses also suggested that using coaching skills in their work was having a positive impact on their own stress levels and also that they were using the coaching structure and framework for goal setting to improve their own personal performance. They commented that they were more aware of other peoples’ thinking; more open to ideas, could confidently stretch others and were more generous with giving acknowledgement – important characteristics of a management style which can support performance improvement.

The greatest value of this coaching skills programme has been in enabling managers to use coaching skills to support their staff. Jason Sadler, Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Insurance (Singapore) Pte Limited believes managers have derived benefit from their coach training and that the initiative has produced improvements in communication skills as intended. He has noticed a positive impact in managers’ behaviours generally and particularly in behaviours in meetings; he is “seeing people asking questions in a way that uses the guidance from the coach training”

The coaching principles will now be rolled out to other heads of department through a coaching programme developed in- house. This in-house programme will be less intense and will specifically focus on supporting the development of leadership and management skills in the organisation. The emphasis will be on helping line managers to use coaching skills in developing their staff, rather than in training them formally as coaches.


 
 
 
 
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