The Challenge

BNP Paribas S.A. is a French international banking group and the leading bank in the European Union. It was formed through the merger of Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) and Paribas in 2000, although its corporate identity descends from its foundation in 1848 as a French national bank.

BNP Paribas believes in openness, freedom, growth, and the ability to change and adapt. The company recognizes the importance of investing in their people. The collaboration with CoachHub is supporting BNP Paribas’ leaders of tomorrow with digital coaching and methods for engaging talent development.

Offering a learning experience that can work for lots of people would be quite challenging. BNP Paribas have a wide and varied employee base in the program and were looking for a flexible and individual solution. CoachHub supported them in harnessing and unleashing the potential of next generation leaders across manager roles, sales, heads of different departments and executive levels, with a program tailored for all levels and career stages that people are at.

The goal with digital coaching was to offer individuals the opportunity to make their own development plan, have sustained support with one person (Rachel manages the talent development of over 400 people) while at the same time encouraging people to move to more digital platforms, a change that some people still struggle with.

The result

BNP Paribas developed a global program in the course of which they offer digital coaching to their leadership talent pipeline. The program named “Leaders for Tomorrow” in the UK, involves just under 400 people across 3 tiers: emerging, advanced and top. It is not a traditional program with set modules, but tailor-made for each individual’s personal development plan that asks “what is the next step and how can we offer them the opportunity to stretch, give them the behaviours, skills, competencies they need?”

In order to get a good understanding of exactly what was needed, Rachel had a few conversations with CoachHub about the process, how to get people involved and was shown around the platform, how it works, the metrics and types of reports she would get. The finance industry is complex, with a lot of regulatory and risk issues, but the customer support team was there for any questions she had.

In the course of the program 30 people are currently taking part in the coaching. Individuals have conversations about where their career is going, explore their skills and how they can use them across businesses. CoachHub works together in a partnership to not only help individuals reach their goals, but take that talent pool and the individuals to the next level, produce high performers, people who are confident in leadership roles, because they learnt to put themselves out there and really stretch themselves.

BNP Paribas enjoys this chance to embrace a new way of learning and working and the individuals were really able to see a difference. There has been very positive feedback all around, including:

• Great flexibility. Individuals can schedule sessions with coaches at times that suit them best, without pressure, doing 45 mins every 2 weeks.
• Not having to spend a lot of time away from work. People have a set time to develop themselves and a sounding board to talk to (the coach).
• The time they invest will be something really worthwhile. Virtual training can be quite unappealing, but this one-on-one coaching is totally focussed on them. 
• They feel like they have really achieved something, learned, improved, challenged themselves.

• Business driven metrics and goals, outcomes. Measuring the success of this program is equally as important as starting it.

Rachel herself took part in the coaching program as well and was really impressed by the process:

BNP Paribas realized that digital coaching is really cost effective. This way, they are able to offer the solution of coaching to a much larger group of people. CoachHub boasts a brilliant team and offers coaching in loads of different languages, nationalities, with a breadth of experience for a really diverse workforce.

Rachel also enjoyed the flexibility it gave her as the Talent Development Manager, having to do no admin or scheduling, as it was all done through the platform. It is really easy for the coachee to organize meetings themselves with all around support from CoachHub. It is testament to the team at BNP Paribas to be offering this level of support to their people when they need it the most.