Driving Transformation with Digital Coaching

Join us in this episode of hrtech.sg’s Tech Talks as we discuss key HR and HRTech aspects with Tim MacCartney, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific at CoachHub.

• Explore the key challenges businesses face and why investing in talent development and coaching is crucial. 
• Learn about the game-changing trends in digital coaching and how HR teams can become more tech-savvy for data-driven decision making. 

Don’t miss this insightful conversation that could transform your approach to HR and leadership in the modern era. Tune in now!

Discussion Topics: Driving Transformation with Digital Coaching

• Business leadership during the pandemic
• Why do companies hesitate to invest in talent development?
• The key trends in digital coaching that are going to be a game changer
• How to help HR teams get their ROI?
• What does the post-pandemic scenario look like?
• How to encourage HR teams to be more tech-savvy?
• Advice for companies that are progressing with their HR journey

Transcript: Driving Transformation with Digital Coaching

Sriram Iyer: Hello, all. Welcome to yet another edition of HR Tech Talks, where we focus on engaging with HR and HRTech subject matter experts to unearth trends and insights in the realm of HRTech. Today, we are extremely happy to host Tim McCartney, who is the Senior Vice President, of Asia Pacific at CoachHub.

Prior to CoachHub, he led, shaped, and transformed teams at top-tier firms such as Conferee, Global Data, Miller Hammond Group, and CEB, now Gartner. Welcome Tim, and thank you for being on our show today.

Tim MacCartney: Thank you, sir. I’m glad to be here. 

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. The last two years have been quite a rollercoaster for many businesses globally. I wanted to ask you, what are the key business and also talent challenges that your Clients have been facing.

Business leadership during the pandemic

Tim MacCartney: Sure. I agree. I think the last two years have been tough on individuals and especially on businesses, And I think that business leaders have responded as best they can. With a need to prioritise problems that were actually already stemming before the pandemic, like delivering a great employee experience, building an inclusive and diverse workforce, succession planning, preparing for leadership transitions, and so on.

That’s demanding a focus on wellness, being, mental health, and driving resilience in people. People want to work in an environment that’s purpose-driven, that’s respectful, that’s more human. And this causes a real challenge for organisations that perhaps aren’t set up that way.

Sriram Iyer: Companies have to invest in developing their talent, right? So talent development as a function is really gaining a lot of prominence. But what we notice is a lot of companies hesitate to invest in talent development and hesitate to invest in coaching, which is an important concept. Why do you think this is happening? Why are companies not investing in talent development and coaching?

Why do companies hesitate to invest in talent development?

Tim MacCartney: I would actually say that organisations are investing in talent development because people are an organisation’s greatest asset. However, that investment is entirely predictable and traditional. So it’s through training and development. And there’s been an explosion of new tech, which has helped to enable learning, but it’s really presenting a problem.

And that problem is choice. So we’re presented with so much information, it’s like having Netflix, right? How many of us are sitting at home each night with our wives trying to work out what we are going to watch tonight? And that is absolutely not what we want a training and development experience to feel like.

And then when you combine access to learning or training with longstanding research from Ebbinghaus on the forgetful curve, we know that 80 per cent of what you’re taught in a classroom or in a learning environment is lost within two weeks. People need an individualised approach and traditional means like mentoring or counselling, they have a very tell approach versus a help approach.

So a mentee, a mentor tells their mentee, this is what you should do. This is how you should. Think this is how you should feel. As a coach, I really believe that coaching helps individuals grow as a person and can help you inspire as a leader through our platform, we can deliver this in a much more scalable way to all levels of an organisation, including individual contributors.

It’s a platform approach. It’s digitally focused and it really has the ability to democratise access. To the population, the people’s population, which can deliver the greatest back.

Sriram Iyer: That’s sick. 80 percent of what you learn in the classroom is lost within two weeks is really mind-boggling. So what are the key trends that you’re witnessing in the workplace that you think are going to be game changers for the faster adoption of digital coaching?

The key trends in digital coaching that are going to be a game changer

Tim MacCartney: So Sriram, I think it’s really about responding to the business challenges that are out there today and thinking about the use cases for digital coaching. So diversity, right? Millions of people speak over a thousand different languages and dialects. And so from a diversity point of view, we need to respect that each culture has a different reaction. We need to be tailored and relevant in the workplace in terms of managing and working through that. And so a coach can really help an individual be aware of their strengths and development goals in supporting an integrated approach.

First-time management. Really a key use case for us with many organisations globally. traditional L and D approaches don’t really go into the manner of helping people apply what they’ve learned on the job enough. So if you can consider having a go-to coach, who’s always challenging what you’re doing and helping you think about what is the right approach, it’s a really simple use case to have someone to go to every couple of weeks and share some of your concerns.

We see the same sort of use cases in leadership. Helping to inspire women who currently make up 15 per cent of the executive force, but they’re 50 per cent of university graduates. So how do we promote women into leadership roles? Make them feel comfortable and accountable, build resilience, et

Being in an organisation that’s trained with large workforces and mindset, having a mindset to be successful, having resilience, having goals, setting, et cetera, these are things that a coach can work with and really drive the greater good across that entire sales workforce.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. Verna Meyer said diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance and Jeff Hutchinson added to it. Equity is having an accessible accessibility ramp to the door where the dance is happening and belonging is deciding the music for the party. It’s not just diversity, as you rightly mentioned, it’s diversity, equity, inclusivity and belonging. And that is where the aspects like digital coaching really help.

Companies, right? And also one of the key aspects that I realised is it can help employees apply the learning on the job, which is very critical in the current context, when people are working remotely in a hybrid environment, it really helps.

Tim MacCartney: I agree and think of a manager and they have the opportunity to talk about their challenges, what they’re trying to work through. But then some of those coaching examples have access to learning activities, perhaps a TED talk to listen to, for example, those things help to embed some of the activities across that period of time so they can see results. That’s what we’re looking for.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. So the important aspect then we come to is how do you help your client HR teams get buy-in from the leadership for the investment and digital coaching?

How to help HR teams get their ROI?

Tim MacCartney: So first, I think we really do need to help organisations rejig and reconsider how they get the best bang for their buck. There’s a lot of budget on R&D and transformation in organisations, but much of this is wasted.

And that’s from institutions like Duke and McKinsey. It’s wasted because there’s a disconnect between what the training is supposed to achieve and what plays out in real life. So we created a very hands-on approach at CoachHub. We have layered customer success and client experience teams from day one.

So we work with our L&D and HR clients to avoid leaving anything to chance. We have teams across APAC in every country, every major country who partner hand in hand to ensure that the program will launch successfully and be as successful as humanly possible across the period and importantly, as you mentioned, we engage the leadership with data.

So we’re a tech-first platform. We have access to great information, and real-time, dashboards that show engagement levels. It shows coach session consumption rates. It shows an NPS after each of the sessions around how effective that has been. And do I trust my coach? It creates a vision of aggregate skills and behaviours that we can address and resolve across the organisation.

In answer, we really help organisations think about what is the ROI on this investment from the impact on the person, the individual, the impact on the team, what kind of performance that’s driving and then organizationally. The benefits to the organisation as a whole. 

Sriram Iyer: I quite like that aspect, Tim and you mentioned that your client has actually used a coach hub as a part of the benefits rather than just as an LND tool. So that makes it intrinsic to the organisation’s culture and makes it available for everyone. And not just that, I think the deployment of the customer success teams right from day one, and also having real-time dashboards and analytics, Which is not something we really see in L and D tools, right?

But having that as part of the coach platform is definitely going to be a great game changer for the HR teams and presenting the ROI for learning and development.

Tim MacCartney: Exactly. Our mission is to democratise coaching and we really mean that. So at all levels of an organisation across the globe, we want to know that everyone has access to a coach to better themselves. And so that’s really our mission.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. Which brings us to the next question, right? What, how do you visualise the post pandemic workplace to be when we are talking about globally pandemic definitely seems to be on the waning side of it, but so what would, what do you think is the post pandemic workplace going to look like?

What does the post-pandemic scenario look like?

Tim MacCartney: The post pandemic workforce will be values driven. Employees want to be heard, appreciated. They want an environment that feels honest. It will be entirely flexible, collaborative. There won’t be any of these lone wolves or sharks out there. There won’t be silos of teams doing independent things that link to flatter hierarchies, so allows for more transparent discussions, faster decision making across an organisation.

I think in summary. This authentic energy comes across like everybody can see your energy, your positive mindset. They get drawn to you. They want to work for you. They want to work with you for a long time. And they want to feel like they are invested in doing so.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. One of the aspects that I really wanted to ask you when we talk about analytics and dashboards is the need for HR teams and the CHROs to be very tech centric and have a data-driven approach. The CEOs no longer want the CHROs to have gut-based decision making. They want data -driven decision-making, right? How do we encourage HR teams to be more data driven and tech savvy?

How to encourage HR teams to be more tech-savvy?

Tim MacCartney: It’s a big challenge out there in the world and, there’s a reason why we’re seeing a rise of HR data analytics teams. Josh Burson writes about this. I think it’s great, it’s great progress for the HR function overall. Yet we layer on what we know about trans transformations from McKinsey is that just 30 percent of any transformation is successful.

70 percent of those fail, right? That’s really significant. So break that down. There’s about three components to any kind of change that’s out there. There’s an organisational design component, structures, processes. What do we need to do? There is certainly technology, which is a big part of that process.

It’s an enabler. And then the third component there is people, culture and workforce plans. And where do we seem to be going wrong? The research suggests it’s all around this people component, right? So whilst there is a lot of data out there, whilst there is technology we’re driving there.

Really, the role of HR teams should be to help change people’s mindsets, to move away from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, to help be appreciative and respectful of change, to prepare for change to create an organisation that’s digitally dexterous, that’s ready for the transformation that we’re all going on.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. So when we talk to our clients Tim, one of the aspects that we talk about is digital transformation. It’s not just about technology. You have four components to it, mindset, and skills. Processes and technology, right? And I think you really nailed it when you said that we need to start with the mindset, how do we bring in a digital mindset not just in individuals, but across teams and the entire leadership, it has to flow from the top.

So I think you really emphasise the aspect that you have your org design, you have the technology, you have the people. I think you need to have people right up front.

Tim MacCartney: 100 percent agree.

Sriram Iyer: That brings us to the last question. Of the discussion today Tim, one of the key aspects is. As you rightly mentioned, enterprises of all sizes are embarking on their digital HR journey. There are various points, some of them are floundering, and some of them are doing well, but they are at varying stages, right? There are a lot of enterprises which are still at the starting point. What would you tell such enterprises who are looking to embark on this journey? And do you have any insights? Do you have any advice for those who are already progressing

Advice for companies that are progressing with their HR journey

Tim MacCartney: The Journey? So being open-minded is really important. And it would surprise me if there weren’t, if there wasn’t an organisation out there right now, that doesn’t. Have to think that as we’re considering returning to work, hybrid workforces, remote hiring, the traditional means of HR is really being thrown on its head.

So we must be open minded and we must understand what we’re resisting. So what are the bottlenecks in an organisation? Where are the problems? How do we plan for those? How do we get ahead? We need to plan for the future. Not just for today, because fundamentally, we’re likely already behind, right? We know people will be leaving.

We know that people are scouting different opportunities there. The role of an enterprise organisation right now is to build the best environment for their people to thrive. And get the greatest results and invest in those people. I considered a testimonial we have from one of our large global clients, JTI.

The head of L&D there, Juliana, said that her advice to organisations out there looking to improve their performance is. Don’t sit still, stop waiting for the perfect time. It’ll never come. You need to start moving ahead. So I encourage all organisations to keep that mindset today.

Sriram Iyer: Sit still, just make the first move and for that, obviously, as you rightly mentioned, you really need to have an open minded, agile mindset approach, which you have been emphasising throughout the discussion. Tim, that was a really insightful discussion. Thank you very much for being in our Tech Talks show. And we look forward to hosting you again soon.

Tim MacCartney: Thank you so much, Sriram. Great to spend some time with you.

Our Guest: Tim MacCartney

Tim MacCartney is a business builder presently charged with introducing CoachHub, the Digital Coaching Platform, to leading organisations in the Asia-Pacific (APJ) region and building a world-class market-facing team.