SoundCloud Music and audio streaming HQ in Berlin Offices in New York, London, Los Angeles 300+ employees The Challenge Learning and Development has been a relevant topic at SoundCloud since the beginning. A year ago, the search for new development offerings for managers began alongside the classic training courses. The search for individually tailored development opportunities was the initiator to offer coaching to all employees. The coaching solution was particularly convincing due to two aspects: 1) It is flexible with regard to the questions asked; and 2) trainings cannot be individually adapted and are often not 100% aligned with the participants’ questions. In addition, coaching has a much higher ROI compared to classical training offerings. The goal of the team is to turn the 70-20-10 model around and therefore invest more money in self-reflective learning instead of classical training. SoundCloud has several international locations, which required special demands from the coaching program: It needs to be completely flexible for everyone in terms of time and place, and it will have to adapt to the learner. “CoachHub matched me with a fantastic coach. Julia has a wealth of experience to share. Throughout our sessions, she gave me tools and techniques I could use to solve specific dif- ficult management situations, as well as career advice when I needed it. It’s great to get an outside perspective on certain problems, and it’s sometimes helpful to ask someone who’s not your direct manager for advice.” Vincent G., Media Streaming, Berlin The Result The idea of using coaching for employee development was inspired by an initiative of another tech start-up, which offers its employees regular “walk-in sessions” with a psychologist. SoundCloud decided to introduce different coaching programs – a coaching programme for every employee and another specific coaching programme for managers, carried out by CoachHub. “CoachHub’s approach perfectly supports the development of our managers and, in my opinion, should definitely be part of modern manage- ment development.”, Aleks Sibilia, Senior Manager Learning & Organisa- tional Development. The decision criteria that CoachHub had to meet as a provider for management coaching included the fulfilment of the technical require- ments, the training of the coaches, the flexibility of the platform and the possibility to roll out the program globally. In addition, the coachees from the pilot phase responded entirely in a positive way to the offer and demonstrated the added value of the intervention. “No matter the managerial level there is much to learn from a group or individual focused coaching program. My CoachHub coach has surpassed my expectations in helping me focus on one of the most commonly overlooked areas in the fast-paced environment that is the tech industry – myself. Having such a cross functional role, my day-to-day demands attention in all matters that affects external and internal stakeholders. To be able to focus on my personal tooling and having the ability to dive even deeper into individual growth has been a much wel- come experience among all the successes and challenges here at SoundCloud.” Mike P., Royalties, NY The plan is to offer comprehensive coaching for all managers in the upcoming year. And the vision is even bigger: coaching is to be made available to all employees as an ongoing development tool in order to raise individual personnel development to a new level.