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The benefits of professional coaching — especially when offered beyond the leadership team to all employees — are wide-ranging.
From improving engagement and increasing retention, to empowering your teams and helping them uncover hidden strengths and skills, coaching can super-charge your workforce. And with AI and the digital revolution promising to transform each role in your business, the value of coaching will only continue to increase.
If you’re looking to kick-start a new coaching program or reinvigorate an existing one, now’s the time. The International Coaching Federation (ICF), a non-profit organisation dedicated to professional coaching, designates 12–18 May, 2025 as International Coaching Week. During this week, ICF hosts numerous events around the world, with the goal to bring people together to explore how coaching can unlock potential, fuel growth and inspire positive change.
Why focus on coaching?
All too often, coaching is offered only to the C-suite or high-level people leaders, denying most employees the chance to benefit from this helpful service. And when coaching is offered beyond leadership to more employees, it’s typically done so in a top-down approach, with the areas for development already predetermined by management.
However, when coaching is offered to everyone, and without being constrained to certain topics, each employee can take ownership of their individual growth and development, enhance their skills and achieve their full potential. It also greatly benefits the company long-term, uncovering hidden skills and capabilities among the workforce and thereby feeding the internal mobility pipeline.
By elevating the team on an individual level through coaching, it can enhance the performance of the entire organisation. In fact, widely accessible coaching provides an engagement halo effect, helping all talent to rise up to greater heights. A study by the ICF revealed that 54% of high-performing companies have a strong culture of coaching. The ICF also found that companies with coaching programs achieve an ROI of more than three times their investment, due to increased earnings.
Coaching also helps to meet demand among talent for more opportunities to grow professionally. Randstad’s 2025 Workmonitor research, a survey of more than 26,000 workers around the world, found that 72% of respondents say training and development is important for current and/or future employment. Even more strikingly, 41% say they would leave a job if they weren’t provided with development opportunities to future-proof their careers, an increase of 12 points compared to last year’s Workmonitor research.
How coaching works
When an individual meets with a coach, it should never be a one-size-fits-all approach. Through one-on-one coaching, talent themselves steer the conversation to truly meet their unique needs, and get the insights they might not have access to otherwise. Coaches are career experts who listen to the concerns, aspirations and interests of each employee, and work with them to determine the best path forward.
Coaching is most effective when it’s delivered in a private, confidential way, in which employees can speak freely in a safe space. This ensures they get the most impact from their coaching sessions, by focusing on their biggest priorities — not their manager’s or the company as a whole. Such an environment gives them the liberty to speak more openly about their challenges and roadblocks, helping their coach to better address their needs. As a result, they’ll get hyper-focused insights and feedback as they work towards their career goals.
Much like all other areas of work, AI affects coaching as well, enabling coaches to further improve how they help their clients. For instance, AI can help coaches to develop learning paths, curate relevant resources for their clients and better guide them to acquire the skills that will help them progress in their careers. Through the combination of the coach’s empathy and understanding with the help of AI, employees get a better, more personalised coaching experience to truly drive their personal growth.
4 ways to embrace coaching today
Understanding how coaching can benefit each employee and the organisation as a whole is an important step in truly embracing a culture of coaching. In honor of International Coaching Week, consider these steps you can take to promote the value of coaching.
Research coaching platforms: If your company is considering offering employee-wide coaching for the first time, research the different platforms available to find the one that best meets your needs.
Refresh your current coaching strategy: Already have a coaching platform in place? Now’s a good time to check in with your provider to gauge success and determine how it can be further improved or expanded.
Celebrate coaching success: While the advantages of coaching are well-known, highlighting real success stories from your team will help to illustrate the transformative power of coaching. Sharing those experiences internally will help others to recognise how coaching can enhance their work lives as well.
Explore ICF’s International Coaching Week events: ICF offers a wide range of activities throughout the week to celebrate the impact of coaching. From webinars and workshops that offer new ideas and insights on coaching, to live coaching demonstrations to see the benefits of coaching in action, there are many resources to help you learn how to create a strong coaching program.
Commit to a culture of coaching
International Coaching Week provides the impetus to think about coaching and the effect it can have on your company. From uncovering new skills and giving employees the confidence to take on new roles and responsibilities, to serving as a crucial competitive differentiator to attract new talent, the power of coaching can lead to almost limitless improvement.
Whether interested in launching a coaching program for the first time, or looking to expand and improve an existing program, now’s the time to consider how to best unleash your team’s full potential through robust coaching for all.
Written by Simon Lyle
Simon Lyle is SVP EMEA at Randstad RiseSmart, the global talent development and transitions business within Randstad Enterprise. He is passionate about coaching, career transition and talent development and the impact it has on individual and organisational success.
With a blend of international general management, sales leadership and programme leadership skills, he brings significant experience gained across outplacement, career mobility, business education, and consulting industries to his work at Randstad Risesmart.
He’s known for scaling up business operations and growing customer relationships in a range of industries, including technology, lifesciences, financial services, professional services and consumer goods. Across his career he has held roles including SVP EMEA, Managing Director and Global Head of Business Development across leading human resources and education organisations.
Simon holds a bachelor's degree in International Business, and a post graduate Diploma in Coaching.
