SAP：Developing employees by coaching

Franziska Weis           SAP Global Peer Learning Program Lead         SAP

Katherine Quintano         SAP Global Peer Learning Community Manager       SAP

Background of conducting coaching

In the VUCA era, both companies andemployees have to adapt to constant changes, which means employees are required to develop new skills,strengthen constructive collaboration and switch roles more flexibly. In this context, SAPbelieves that coaching helps employees reflect on their goals, values and purpose as well as getting a clearer understanding of their strengths and aspirations. Moreover, SAP regards coaching as an investment in employees as it assists them to activate their potential, identify how their individual skills can contribute to the needs and success of the organization, and help them to perform at their best.

As part of SAP's cultural transformation,we are inevitably renewing our leadership culture. Leaders should care about both their head and heart and truly unlock the potential of their employees – which has a lot to do with building up a coaching mindset and coaching skills. Therefore, coaching can also make a great contribution to leadership and cultural transformation.

Application scenarios of coaching

▷   Leadership development: SAP is reshaping its leadership culture. Among others, leaders need to gain coaching skills so that they can unlock the potential of their employees and empower them to best utilize their talent.

     For this reason, coaching is embedded in leadership development and training programs. And since the majority of SAP Coaches are leaders, they can apply their coaching skills in their daily interactions with their employees.

▷   Performance coaching: SAP Coaches support the Data Driven Coaching.Program by providing coaching services to Sales employees to
help them improve their sales performance. This program measures the number of opportunities or accounts that  Sales employees have generated, the number of deals they have concluded and the number of products they have sold.

▷   Talent development: All SAP employees have access to coaching, through which they can enhance their career development and skills by reflecting on their goals and exploring their key strengths.

▷   Organizational transformation and change: SAP has truly embedded coaching in transformation initiatives. For example, coaching teams to facilitate discussions, develop strategies, team visions and missions. Or introducing coaching when forming a new team.

Establishment  of internal coaching
 

    SAP’s Global Coaching Program began as a grassroots initiative seventeen years ago when a handful of managers passionate about improving their people management skills found and completed an external coaching training.

    Today, SAP uses both internal coaches and externalcoaches. External coaches come from different vendors, SAP partners with them because they have global reach, and can offer different views and perspectives in comparison to their internal counterparts. External coaches cater more to the needs of executives and upper and middle management. In terms of cost, external coaching is not funded by SAP’s HR department – it’s charged to the executives or leaders who want to receive it. 

SAP has also established internal coaching and a thorough process for selecting internal coaches – funded by SAP’s HR department. The following will focus on the practice of internal coaching of SAP.

▷   Selection and training of internal coaches

A coaching training through an external certified provider is required for becoming an internal coach. In addition, the company has the following requirements for internal coaches:

▷ Strong communication skills and the ability to handle difficult

conversations.

▷ A sense of self-reflection and initial experience with coaching (as a

coachee).
       ▷ At least  three years of work experience, including project experience, customer/advisory  function, or team lead/people manager responsibilities.

After participating in the external coaching training (~100 hours) and becoming certified SAP Coaches, internal coaches need to further develop themselves and continuously improve their skills. In addition to professional coach training, SAP offers internal coaches learning sessions related to strategic topics that they need to be aware of (for example, new leadership behaviors expected in the company), internal coach supervision, peer consulting and mentoring.
 

SAP has also established an ambassador network around the world, which is a community built by internal coaches themselves, for them to share best practices.

SAP is also piloting team coaching training, providing 45 trainings on team coaching for a selected pool of coaches this year.

Last but not least, SAP held a global coaching summit (2020) to facilitate communication and exchange among internal coaches.

▷    Matching of coaches and coachees

The company is leveraging SAP® SuccessFactors® Succession & Development solution, accessible to all employees, to match potential coaches with internal coaches.

▷ The internalcoach registers in the system

         SAP Coaches need to register on the platform, then answer a few questions.

For example:

1)“ Have you completed 100 hours of coach training?”

2)“ Have you signed our quality in ethical guidelines as a coach?”

3)“ Has your line manager approved your commitment to devote 5% of your working time for coaching?”

     After that, they can create their coaching profile and specify for which topic they want to provide coaching services, such as professional development, leadership, transformation, conflict, etc. They also have to answer questions such as:

1)“ What is your region and the language you speak?”

2)“ What is your coaching method and why should the participants choose you?”

3)“ What is important to you when it comes to coaching?”

After completing all questions, they need to upload their coaching certificate. The HR team will then check whether the application meets the required coaching quality standards. If so, the profile of the internal coach will be visible on the coaching platform.

▷ The coachee enters the system to search for a coach

Employees seeking coaching need to select the area of interest and the direction.  they want to develop (for example career development). They can also select a preferred location or language (for example, a coach who is based in Germany or speaks German). The system will search and match coaches who best meet the set requirements – just like a search engine. The requestor can then learn more about each coach's profile and background through their coach card

▷ Understandingand confirmation before establishing a coaching relationship

Trust and chemistry from both the coach and coachee is crucial when it comes to a successful coaching relationship. So even if the system recommends
selected coaches, HR suggests that the coachee has an initial meeting with them. This initial  meeting allows the coachee to ask more specific questions about the coaching course. It also allows the coach to ask questions about the challenge or the topic the coachee wants to address and better understand their needs. After going through such a process, the coachee can decide on which coach would be the most suitable for them.

▷ Matching issuccessful and the coaching relationship is carried out

  Both sides jointly define the coaching contract: they determine the actual goal of the coaching, agree on ground rules, and mutually decide how often to meeteach other. Then they sign the Coaching Agreement document that is not shared with anyone else.

    ▷ End of thecoaching process and timely tracking of the coachee's feedback

        A survey is triggered to the coachee once the coaching relationship is ended in the tool, for them to provide feedback on the whole coaching experience. They can also share the coaching effect and whether they can apply the results to their daily work.

It is worth mentioning that coaching at SAP is completely employee driven. This means there is no involvement from HR and respective line managers in the process. While employees can discuss their development needs, including coaching, with their manager, they have the freedom to search for coaches in the tool, select the one that best fits their needs, decide together with their coach on the topics that will be explored and the suitable frequency of the coaching sessions – without sharing anything with their manager and HR. SAP hopes that everyone can benefit from  coaching through such a mechanism.

▷    Improve the willingness of coaching

    Internal coaches at SAP are asked to contribute 5% of their time to coaching  and 95% of their time to daily work. They initially get approval from their line  manager to be allowed to dedicate 5% of their working time to coaching others. For continuous motivation, SAP also enhances the willingness of internal  coaches through  the following methods.

    ▷ Timely recognition: SAP has a global tool that is used to give timely

recognition and appreciation to each SAP Coach and provide them with positive
feedback. Their managers also receive such an appreciation reward.

    ▷ Exclusive learning and development opportunities: SAP continuously offers opportunities for internal coaches to keep developing themselves and their  practice. This includes internal dedicated events (such as the Global Coaching Summit), deep dives on strategic topics, learning sessions on coaching-related topics and coaching techniques, experience sharing, peer consulting, supervision, opportunities to support special initiatives, etc. SAP is also funding ICF memberships for our ambassadors and proposing discounted rates for external offerings to members of the coach community.

▷ Building communities through the ambassador network: SAP believes that establishing a truly close community and encouraging coaches to share their experiences while coaching is conducive to increasing their intrinsic motivation.

▷ Launch coaching badge: SAP has launched a badge for SAP Coaches.

They can use it internally (for example in their e-mail signature) or externally (for example publishing it on their LinkedIn account) to indicate that they are a certified coach.

The roles of HR in coaching

The most important role of HR is to answer employees' questions about coaching, such as how to use coaching or how to become a coach.

At the same time, it also provides exclusive learning and development for coaches and ensures that there is cooperation and communication within the community – by inspiring the coach community members and encouraging practices and knowledge sharing.

Since 2016, SAP HR also centrally funds coaching training, meaning that an employee can apply for getting funding from HR to become a coach. In light of this funding process, the HR team is responsible for planning this whole process.

Moreover, an HR team is in regular conversation with business leaders to ensure the coaching program is being utilized to its full potential to meet business needs and support SAP’s corporate strategy

Effectiveness measurement

Whereas it could be difficult, SAP has established instruments to measure the effectiveness of coaching, at different levels.

▷   Survey after the end of the coaching relationship: Once the coaching relationship ends, a survey is triggered by the system and sent to the coachee. It measures the following aspects:

▷ Whether the coachee is satisfied with the coaching relationship and
whether they are willing to recommend it to colleagues.

       ▷ Whether coaching helped to improve their self-awareness.

▷ Whether the skills learned from the coaching can be applied to work and life.

▷ Whether they made progress in achieving their goals after the coaching
relationship ended.

       ▷ Whether the coaching has improved their job satisfaction in SAP.

▷   Long-term impact measurement: A quantitative impact analysis is
planned for this year to measure the effect of coaching with Leadership Trust Index, Employee Engagement, Percentage of Women in Leadership Roles, Promotions, Progression, likelihood to mark business & development goals as complete, and retention.

Challenges and solutions

▷    The increase of coaching demand: SAP has embedded coaching into the organization as it wants all employees to have equal opportunities to further develop skills for the future and unlock their potential – while supporting the leadership transformation. As the demand for coaching grows, there will be an increasing challenge for coaches to invest only 5% of their time. To solve this problem, we are using data and metrics to show the impact of coaching.

▷   The visibility and awareness of coaching at the employee level has not yet been fully opened. Although the perception of coaching has changed and is moving in a positive direction, there is still a lack of clarity about what coaching truly is. It’s not clear to everyone what the value of participating in coaching is and how coaching is different from mentoring – and the term“ coach” is used in different ways at SAP.

  To overcome this challenge, SAP holds internal events to showcase what real coaching is and what it can be used for. At the same time, the ambassador network continuously helps to promote coaching, raise awareness and truly demonstrate the impact of coaching.