Stephanie Quillen and Kelli Billstein |
A riddle for HR leaders: There’s a powerful lever for driving authentic growth, retention, engagement, and performance across your workforce. It’s often viewed as just check-the-box support. And you’re probably paying for it already, but not leveraging it fully.
Coaching.
Often included as part of a mental-health benefit or education benefit for your employees, it can seem as standard as cupholders in a car and just as utilitarian. But consider the power of a one-on-one relationship with a coach whose sole job it is to guide growth and unlock potential — in each of your employees. Executive coaches don’t hesitate to tout metrics like 788% ROI, which a recent Metrix Global study found. Coaching is quietly having an effect at the frontline worker level, too, just without the same visibility or fanfare. That effect, at its most transformative, is the activation of occupational identity.
For a deeper dive into occupational identity — and why it matters for performance, retention, and mobility — explore our full article here.
Let’s think of this as the “coming online” of one’s connection to their work, their internal career mobility options, their sense of possibility in the context of you, their employer. Is there a stronger driver for growth and resilience, at scale, across your business, than the one that authentically emerges as part of oneself?
That’s not a riddle. That’s the reason why you need to start paying attention to coaching.
How employers are using coaching to drive business outcomes
We’ve seen employers like Chipotle lean into coaching as part of their broader talent strategy, recognizing how impactful it can be for driving critical business outcomes.
HR leaders shouldn’t think of coaching as transactional support, but as a force multiplier for retention, belonging, and purpose.
- Marissa Andrada, CHRO, Chipotle
Marissa Andrada, former CHRO at Chipotle, articulated this perspective: “When embedded thoughtfully within culture, coaching becomes an accelerant. It transforms access into action. It bridges the gap between a benefit that’s available and one that’s truly utilized and is, indeed, transformative. HR leaders shouldn't think of coaching as transactional support, but as a force multiplier for retention, belonging, and purpose."
At Chipotle, strategically embedding coaching within their education benefit directly clarified career pathways for employees. This approach contributed to measurable outcomes, including a 6x increase in internal promotions and a 2x increase in retention. Andrada puts it plainly:
“Before our work with Guild, growth often felt like a mystery. Who decides which team member becomes a shift lead? What does it take to move up? Our work with Guild enabled us to codify what success looked like, and coaches helped employees map their way through it.”
Strategic coaching transforms theoretical access to career opportunities into tangible, practical action. Employees become active participants in shaping their professional identities and futures, creating a more engaged, resilient workforce.
How coaching activates identity, and what it looks like in practice
Coaching is especially potent when it’s part of talent strategy or learning and development (L&D) strategy. That’s one of the reasons why most education-benefit providers, Guild included, offer coaching services. The metrics we’re able to capture typically come farther downstream, after an employee has enrolled in a learning program and has opted to work with a coach along the way. Metrics like persistence are clear indicators. For example, there are 23 more completions for every 100 short form learners who work directly with Guild Coaching, signaling higher engagement and stronger support in fast-paced, work-aligned environments.
Impact that happens upstream and midstream, in the process of coaching, is by definition harder to point to. But we catch glimpses of it in learner interviews, such as the following from Guild learner Mardio L., a Tyson Foods employee:
“Every time [my coach] and I speak, we’re always putting together the things I’ve learned and a couple of ideas. She’s always doing an intellectual search with me to figure out, ‘Could you see yourself doing this? What do you think would drive you ambitiously to do this?’ These are the kind of questions I need … they beckon me to really be open with different things.”
Mardio elaborates on the reflective nature of coaching:
“[My coach] gives me a really good space to openly discuss things I think will work for me, things I’m not sure will work for me, things I’m a little nervous to explore. I like that she’s a great listener. She’s able to incentivize me to do more reading, try different things, think about certain things I didn’t think about before.”
The process of gradually opening a learner’s mind to new pathways, gaining new skills and applying them at work — connecting the dots between self awareness, motivation, and career — can dramatically contribute to internal mobility, retention, and engagement.
Finally, Mardio connects coaching explicitly to his occupational identity:
“She does really go into, ‘What are your short-term [goals]? What are some long-term [goals]? Based on those answers, why do you have these goals? What do you think they’ll serve for you?’ They helped me identify what my true values are. One of the beautiful things I got out of that was, I was able to see that … my goals, they cater to values existing outside of me.”
The process of gradually opening a learner’s mind to new pathways, gaining new skills and applying them at work — connecting the dots between self awareness, motivation, and career — can dramatically contribute to internal mobility, retention, and engagement.
Now imagine this deployed at scale, if all your employees used coaching the way Mardio does.
Practical steps HR leaders can take to maximize coaching’s impact
If your organization currently offers coaching to employees, here are some immediate, practical ways you can leverage it strategically:
Integrate coaching into your culture.
Normalize coaching across all levels of the business by embedding it into your talent development approach. Encourage managers to discuss coaching engagement during employee reviews or development conversations. Not as an obligation, but as a valued tool for growth.
How this maximizes impact: It reinforces a culture that prioritizes growth and signals that coaching isn’t just available, it’s expected and supported. Over time, this aligns culture with the value of development and demonstrates your commitment to helping employees grow within the business.
Communicate about coaching broadly and often.
Use internal channels (e.g., your intranet, team meetings, company-wide emails, frontline huddles) to regularly remind employees that coaching is available. Pay particular attention to groups that may be less likely to engage, such as hourly or frontline workers.
How this maximizes impact: It validates the message that the business cares about the wellbeing of its employees and underscores the perspective that coaching isn’t just for leaders; it’s for everyone.
Make coaching easy to use.
Position coaching as something that can fit into the flow of the workday, and make space for employees to connect with a coach. Remind employees that most coaching calls take just 30 minutes and can often happen during a break or between shifts.
How this maximizes impact: Integrating coaching into the rhythm of the workday makes it more sustainable and effective, and it allows employees to address work-related challenges or goals in real-time.
When you view coaching strategically — especially during critical moments of change, growth, or reskilling — you create deeper, more lasting connections between employees and their work.
Rethinking coaching’s role
For an employee population, the highest power of coaching lies in its ability to nurture an employee’s sense of occupational identity, purpose, and clarity — factors foundational to enduring engagement and retention. Organizations that have already recognized this, like Chipotle, are seeing substantial impacts on their workforce culture and performance.
In an era of AI disruption, talent scarcity, and rapidly evolving skillsets, don’t underestimate what coaching can unlock for your people and your business. It could be the missing link between where your workforce is today and where your organization needs it to evolve tomorrow.
