Coaching at Cega Group: evolution not revolution
The Cega group is a privately owned company with approximately 400 employees. The company provides medical risk assessment, travel assistance, emergency medical assistance, cost containment and claims handling services to travel insurance underwriters. Cega operates its own fleet of air ambulances, based at Bournemouth airport, and from its Chichester contact centre Cega responds to customers in distressing circumstances. Claims are made as a result of something going wrong before, during or after a holiday. For example: curtailments due to illness or sudden death; accidents; muggings; or loss whilst travelling.
Coaching is a very recent innovation in Cega and has evolved in stages during the last two years. During 2005, a few senior managers received independent external coaching. While the coaching was received positively, these managers formed their own personal and diverse understanding of what coaching consisted of and its potential for adding value to the business. There was no clear recognition or consensus about the role coaching could play in improving performance at department or team level.
Since these early beginnings, coaching has evolved in an organic way. Cega has chosen not to develop a systematic coaching strategy, but has instead delivered coaching learning interventions ‘with deliberate purpose’.
Coaching skills have been seeded across the organisation through a number of initiatives. An important intervention has been to ‘train the trainer to be a coach’. The company has given trainers the opportunity to develop coaching skills which they can use as part of their tool kit. They can become coaches without the need for any formal announcement of 'a strategy'. Take up from potential coachees was initially low, probably because it is an informal offering, but this subtle intervention is growing in reputation, respect and impact.
Cega has also looked for opportunities to build on nascent coaching skills within the organisation. For example, the organisation has encouraged and nurtured team leaders who have displayed coaching like behaviour. More formal interventions have been aimed at team managers through including coaching on the company’s Management Development programme. Team managers experience coaching themselves and are also empowered to coach members of their team.
The role of ‘buddies’ has also been widened to incorporate coaching. All the new starter induction 'buddies' are now being taken through a coaching skills course. This means that each team has a ‘champion’ skilled in peer coaching to enhance Cega’s ‘new starter experience’. New starters are introduced to their coach on their first day. They spend an hour a day with their coach during their first ten days of induction training. When new starters join their operational team on a permanent basis, they sit next to their coach. Although individuals are now ‘flying solo’, their coach is by their side to offer encouragement and support.
Lessons and challenges
What has Cega learnt in the last two years since coaching was first introduced into the organisation? Overall, the company believes an emergent approach to coaching has been right for its context and culture. The company also believes that coaching has had a beneficial impact on individual, team and organisational performance. For instance:
- customer satisfaction surveys have indicated a direct correlation between ‘empathy coaching’ and increased satisfaction ratings.
- reduced complaints have been attributed to a greater willingness among employees to escalate more problematic cases, as a result of enhanced relationships between team members and their manager.
- coaching of individuals around specific areas of concern has produced excellent results in a very cost-effective way.
- the culture has changed. Performance management is ‘now about affirming what we want to see more of, rather than constantly picking up on the mistakes’, says a Cega manager. SMART goals are producing rapid gains and a creative atmosphere where team managers engage in positive praise feedback.
Cega has also learnt other valuable lessons when coaching has worked less well. For instance, in keeping with evidence from the coaching literature, the company has found that coaching is less effective when it is used as a remedial tool – effectively as a last resort of poor performance management. Coaching also has limited effectiveness in promoting cross functional working. Team managers coaching staff from other teams and cross-departmental coaching have encountered a number of difficulties. Issues arose about boundaries, confidentiality and individual sensibilities that were not easy to resolve and the practice has not been continued.
Another challenge is to decide what happens to issues raised during a coaching session which could benefit from some form of intervention or resolution from the organisation. At the moment, there is little scope to resolve such issues and the company needs to think further about whether to design a resolution process which might be helpful to individuals and their coaches.
Whilst some empirical evidence is being gathered to support the correlation between coaching interventions and improved performance, Cega has struggled to isolate all the variables making an impact on profitability. A culture of innovation is producing many creative changes to working practice with the aim of increasing efficiency without compromising world-class customer care. This makes it hard to attribute success to coaching alone, however, the use of coaching as a learning intervention is being increasingly aligned with the key business drivers. During Cega’s evaluation process, where there is a clear line of sight between departmental objectives and coaching initiatives, improved results can be attributed, at least in part, to the coaching role of managers and trainers.
As it considers developing its coaching approach for the future, Cega has identified the following questions and challenges:
- do we continue with an emergent approach or will coaching need to be formalised at some stage?
- do we make a business case for external coaches? If so, at what level in the organisation?
- do we seek formal accreditation for in-house coaches? If so, with which organisation should we affiliate?
- how do we release team managers from other priorities so that they can invest more time in coaching? Are team managers the right people to carry out coaching?
- do we need to invest in Internal Coaches, who have no other responsibilities and;
- how would we manage the ‘three-cornered relationship’?
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