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Most organizations set up coaching programs to help their employees improve their skills, career paths, and fix their performance. While all that are parts of the benefits of internal coaching, there are many other benefits attached to setting up a coaching program.

In this article, we’ll be exploring how internal coaching can help to improve the employee development program.

What is internal coaching?

Both internal and external coaching is comparable in every sense, except that internal coaching involves the coach and the coachees working in the same organization.

Internal coaches are different from an organization’s line managers. So, to achieve the best results, organizations should ensure that internal coaches get excluded from the everyday management of the coachees.

The purpose of that is to show a clear line between the process and the daily job coaching, involving departmental managers.

5 benefits of internal coaching to the employee’s development program

Every organization needs a coaching strategy to support their leaders and help them boost their performances. However, it’s left to you to decide whether what you need is an internal coaching or external coaching.

Below are some of the benefits of using internal coaching for your organization. Hopefully, you can find reasons to start using it for your employee program.

Cost-effectiveness

When it comes to organizational setup, the cost is an essential factor to put into consideration for every program. As such, most organizations prefer to opt for cost-effectiveness for their employee development programs.

In the case of internal coaching, it’s a more cost-effective choice compared to external coaching. That’s because it uses the employees’ time and knowledge already on the payroll, instead of hiring new consultants.

It’s applicable down an organizational hierarchy

As the saying goes, nobody tells your story better than you do. The same also goes for the loyal employees of your organization. They understand your company’s processes and culture better than external consultants.

Choosing them as your internal coaches will enable them to leverage the internal knowledge and experience gathered over the years into the coaching program. By so doing, they get to work more quickly and efficiently because they know what resources are available.

By promoting your senior leaders/managers as coaches, you get to show them how valuable they are to your company. Apart from that, you also get to show your employees that your company values employees’ growth and development.

Easy accessibility

Without a doubt, internal coaches are easily accessible to external coaches. That’s because both the coaches and coachees work in the same organization and share almost everything in common.

There’s no travel barrier that most external coaches face. With an internal coaching program, it’s easier to schedule meetings that favor the coachees.

You won’t get to schedules meeting at odd times that are not comfortable with the employees because the external coach has limited time.

Apart from that, it’s easier for internal coaches to get more informal with their coachees since they most likely see every day.

Easier to incorporate into the employee’s development program

Having internal coaching, you can easily switch into employee development programs. How do I mean? You can use coaching to support online management courses for your senior managers.

That’ll help to improve training and enable managers to improve their skills and performance. Another way internal coaching can blend into the employee development programs is by integrating a coaching course into the program.

That enables your employees to improve their coaching skills to become great leaders for your organization.

Identifying and developing high-potential employees

One way to achieve success in an organization is through identifying the gurus of the organization. With internal coaching, it’s easier to identify high potential employees for an organizational leadership role.

So, by identifying them early, you can easily enroll them in leadership courses to better help them develop their skills.

Wrapping Up

Seeing the benefits above, I hope you find a reason to start using them for your employee development program. Your company needs to identify and develop potential leaders.

Besides, having an internal coach will save you a lot of money and deliver better results.