Real-world coaching evaluation: a guide for practitioners

CIPD research has shown that coaching is becoming a must-have for organisations and part of normal management practice. However, while the use of coaching is steadily increasing, organisations are failing to capture its value by neglecting to evaluate it effectively.

This evaluation gap needs to be addressed so that the impact of coaching can be demonstrated to keep it from coming under threat. This guide sets out to embed effective evaluation practice by:

• reviewing the evidence on the evaluation gap and suggesting why it exists
• looking at the basic tools of evaluation for coaching and the issues and problems with them
• addressing the issues with inappropriate use of the ROI model
• examining the data sources for evaluation and how we can use them
• looking at how we can develop an integrated approach to coaching evaluation using the OPRA framework.

A set of online thought tools accompanies this guide to help practitioners to evaluate coaching.

Published September 2010