Episode 226: How to Drive Workforce Experience and Learning with Digital Coaching (Interview with Anna Tavis)
For a long time, coaching was an exclusive privilege—mainly reserved for senior leaders. But thanks to AI and digital platforms, that is changing. Coaching is now accessible at every level of an organisation, transforming how employees learn, grow, and develop. However, this shift also raises important questions:
Is digital coaching as effective as traditional methods? How can organisations balance human and AI-driven coaching? What challenges should HR leaders anticipate when implementing these tools?
To uncover these very important questions, in this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, David Green is joined by Anna Tavis, researcher, global educator, coach, and Chair of the Human Capital Management Department at New York University.
Together, David and Anna discuss:
How AI-driven coaching is being used in organisations today
Who benefits most from digital coaching—and who might not
Key considerations for HR leaders implementing AI coaching tools
Common challenges in adoption and how to navigate them
The impact of AI coaching on employee feedback and workforce insights
The future of learning, development, and coaching in the next decade
With AI reshaping the workplace, understanding how to integrate digital coaching effectively is more important than ever.
So grab a pen and paper and tune in to this must-listen episode sponsored by Amazing Workplace, an AI-powered platform designed to help companies grow and succeed by unlocking the full potential of their people.
By providing the most accurate insights into how employees feel and why, Amazing Workplace equips leaders with powerful tools to drive meaningful improvements where they matter most.
In fact, with Amazing Workplace, companies have reduced turnover by up to 90% and have increased revenue by over 400%. Find out more at www.amazingworkplace.com
[0:00:00] David Green: Over the course of my career, I've had the privilege of working with some incredible coaches. I've also had the opportunity to coach others too. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the right coaching at the right time can be truly transformational to someone's career growth. However, for a long time, coaching was something exclusive, mostly reserved for senior leaders. But thankfully, that is all changing. Thanks to AI and digital platforms, coaching is now becoming accessible to everyone at every level of an organisation. While that's an exciting shift, it also raises some big questions, such as, is digital coaching as impactful as traditional methods; how can organisations blend human and AI-driven coaching effectively; and, is digital coaching for everyone?
I'm David Green, and today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I'm delighted to welcome to the show Anna Tavis, Researcher, Global Educator, Coach and Chair of the Human Capital Management Department at New York University, to talk us through this incredible topic. Having recently published her book, The Digital Coaching Revolution, with Woody Woodward, Anna and I will be exploring how organisations can move from traditional coaching methods to scalable AI-powered solutions. We'll dive into how digital coaching is being used in organisations today, the challenges HR leaders need to look out for, and how AI is reshaping the future of learning and development. With that said, let's get the conversation started with an introduction from Anna herself.
Hi Anna, welcome back to the show. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners and also your various things that you do, and the journey that led you to where you are today as well, please?
[0:02:00] Anna Tavis: Thank you so much, David. I am delighted. I am a devoted listener to the podcast. I learn so much from all of your guests and yourself, your commentary, so I'm really honoured to be here. So, I'm going to start from the end. Right now, I am the Chair of the Human Capital Management Department at New York University, overseeing four master's degrees in human capital management, and a sole Master of Science, as well as five various certificates. So, we are really in upskilling, reskilling and elevating the skill level of HR to the next generation HR. We're really looking toward building that bench of future HR leaders. And that is a real challenge, David, as you can imagine, as organisations are trying to figure out what is it, what kinds of skills they need to train their employees on to stay relevant, in education, because we're kind of a little bit further removed from the actual workplace, although most of our students are working professionals. We have to be looking around the corners and trying to understand what that next generation HR might look like. So, lots of challenges.
Just a couple of background facts which I think might be relevant here. I did spend quite a bit of my career, 15 years, working for technology companies as well as on Wall Street. So, well familiar with those types of very dynamic environments, both in the United States and in Europe. Learned a lot from that practical experience. And then I bounced back into professional learning, professional teaching in academia. So, that is giving me a lot of also insight into the kinds of challenges that we now face in transitioning people from pure learning to actually being effective in the job. So, that's my challenge, and I really enjoy doing what I'm doing today.
[0:04:31] David Green: Well, great, and you've kindly invited me along a couple of times to your class at NYU as part of the HR Analytics Meetup Group, which Jeremy Shapiro and Stela Lupushor organised, and we were there just in September. I think we were talking about AI and the impact that's having on HR and people analytics, which leads us nicely to what we're going to be talking about for most of today. So, in March 2024, you published this very, very good book, brilliant book, The Digital Coaching Revolution, together with Woody Woodward, highlighting the critical transition from traditional executive coaching for the few, I guess, to democratised digital coaching for the many. Why is this shift so critical into today's workplace?
[0:05:18] Anna Tavis: Digital coaching, it really is a lot more than about coaching. As you mentioned, when we were looking at the coaching field, it traditionally was reserved for a small elite and really provided at times to high potentials. It's high potentials elite, and therefore I think the attention that it needed to receive from the L&D, broader L&D community as well as HR, was very, very limited because of the access issues, the costs, the availability of the coaches, etc, so there was scarcity in the coaching market. However, we've turned toward much more democratised workplace, and I think it does connect to the big ideological shift that most of your guests talk about, that move from the point of view of employee experience and how important it is to attend to the entire population, and we've moved away from, if you recall, the war for talent, the kind of focus on high potential and leaders only.
So, that is where I think democratising coaching has become more of a focus and clearly, that was not available to us if we were going to scale exclusively human skills. If we were to rely on the small cohort of coaches who are actually often very highly paid for their retainer engagements, we would never be able to serve the entirety of the employee population. So, therefore, first, enter digital platforms. Starting in 2013, BetterUp was one of the first, followed by EZRA, CoachHub, and now Valence. And we're looking at the maturity curve of coaching, evolving from a very exclusive, elitist development tool to highly democratised, accessible, affordable options for companies to be really investing in and focusing in, especially now at the time when we need to transform skills. Upskilling, reskilling, retooling organisation requires tremendous agility and speed, which is not available if we start funnelling people into the same traditional classes.
So, I think coaching has been transformed into a go-to, the most accelerated, the most personalised way of achieving the goals of broader workforce planning, and transformation of getting your employees to the level of skill that they require in a most personalised way. And at NYU, we created Coaching and Technology Summit, when we invite technologists, industry leaders, heads of coaching and organisations, as well as individual coaches, to have this broader neutral conversation about what's the future of digital coaching in companies, in organisations at large, and hence the book. This is just the beginning.
[0:09:03] David Green: And let's focus on the organisation. So, thanks, Anna, that's a great explanation, kind of positions, I think, digital coaching and then the conversation that we can have moving forward. How are you seeing organisations approach digital coaching, this new type of accelerated learning, you could call it?
[0:09:23] Anna Tavis: So, I would say, David, first, cautiously. Organisations are obviously looking at these tools, but like everything else, they're looking at the pioneers, the front-runners, the most courageous ones out there. And there are some who I would say dove head down and embraced these tools. So, it usually starts with the pilots. But first of all, let me just introduce something here. A huge accelerator for the introduction of these tools was the pandemic. When people were distributed, removed into their kitchens and other types of home offices, that were a necessity at the time of the pandemic, organisations started to think and reflect about how to provide the support that employees needed in all of those locations, and that's where digital platforms came about. They were still used primarily with the live coaches, where coaches were using Zoom to connect for you know a certain amount of book time, and companies started to add digital coaching as a part of their benefit offering, so to support employees, mental health, other types of issues, etc. So, that's where it started.
But it continued to evolve, even in those organisations that initially engaged at the purely survival level, so to say. Now, they're rethinking and pivoting to more strategic applications. To give you an example, so from meeting their coaches on Zoom face to face, just facilitated through digital platforms, we now are seeing the emergence and growth of pure AI coaches with no human interactions at all, and that's gaining momentum. This is where we see a huge opportunity for scalability. It's mostly conversational AI, for example, the company that is exclusively and natively AI coaching is Valence, whereas the more traditional ones, they are also all introducing AI agents and coaches, but they started out from platforms and still have an army of live coaches that you can connect to, like BetterUp and Ezra, etc. But Valence, for example, they jumped into the pool of coaching platforms exclusively with their AI coach, Nadia, that can speak 80 languages, is scalable across the globe, basically available 24/7. It's a conversational AI, you do not need to type the text, it talks to you, and obviously there's a lot of learning that's built into that platform. The AI gets to know who you are, your issues. It also takes care of scheduling follow-up.
Just to give you an example of another company that started small, Delta Airlines. And now, they come in having run a very successful pilot, they have now engaged Valence to provide services for the entirety of their organisations. And if you think about organisation, and if you think about a very, very distributed workforce, where you have employees in the front lines of airline, working in different hubs, working in different airports, from baggage handlers to check-in agents, etc, now all of them have access to an AI coach that helps, maybe not in a most sophisticated way, but at least can address quite a few baseline issues that normally those employees do not have access to.
[0:13:42] David Green: Is there a certain demographics, personalities, job functions, etc, that prefer or benefit more from either human or digital coaching; and how can organisations take this into consideration when implementing I guess human coaching and digital coaching into their organisations?
[0:15:25] Anna Tavis: That's such a good question, David. First of all, the demographic that is most resistant is the live coaches. The live coaches are really, really cautious about what it's going to do to their livelihood, understandably, and I think our goal is to really communicate and educate coaches that a coach with a bot is much more effective than a coach without a bot.
[0:15:50] David Green: It's an 'and', not an 'or'.
[0:15:52] Anna Tavis: Exactly. So, the way I want to address this question, David, on quite a few of your podcasts, you talk about psychological safety and how important it is. It kind of was front-lined in the conversations about organisational culture, etc. We've done a ton of research on that. And so, what's fascinating to me is to see how that psychological safety is developing in the context of communicating with a coach or communicating with an AI coach. What we are finding overwhelmingly, communication with an AI coach is much more psychologically safe than communicating to your manager, let's say, or sharing some concerns you might have, or gaps in your own skills, because we still have quite a bit of hierarchy in our organisations.
It doesn't matter how much we invest in making our organisations safe or how much training our managers go through to be good coaches to their employees, there's still, at the end of the day, that performance management cycle where they need to assess you, they need to assign you to a certain box, for better or worse, whether those boxes exist or not. There's still a hierarchy, and then you get either promoted or demoted or laid off, and your managers determine your compensation levels, your bonuses. All of that creates that environment where there's never a full psychological safety for sharing with your manager. However, with AI, we find that people are a lot more relaxed, a lot more safe in getting answers for sometimes most basic questions that they will hesitate to ask of their manager or even their co-workers. So, that's one question. I do think that, at least at the basic level, you can create a lot more psychological safety, providing employees with those levels of coaching.
The other thing that we are finding is, and there are some experiments running across different organisations, where for example, Generation Z coming out from under-served communities. For example, in New York City public school districts, in certain areas, there's one college counsellor per 500 students, which is just an impossible job, as we know. So, what we are finding that those kids, as we call them, are much more comfortable having that in their pockets, the coach whom they can ask questions, get basic advice, etc. So, it's the younger generation as well as the most senior people, who oftentimes find themselves with a different set of vulnerabilities at the top of the organisation. We talk about being lonely at the top. Clearly, they can have access to a human coach, but comparing a human coach with a digital coach, we always assume that you get your top-level executive coach who will be totally in sync with how you feel, who you are, etc. There are just as many not particularly very good coaches with whom you do not have the synergy that you need to be getting the service, the advice that you need.
I, myself, in my previous roles as the Head of Global Talent for Fortune 50 companies, I've seen those derailed coaching engagements over and over again. So, I do think that even though it might not be 100%, but the level of adoption from these companies that I mentioned, and they are huge companies, Coca-Cola, Delta, VML, lots of companies, Experian, I can name multiple who are experimenting with these tools, they are finding a significant level of adoption. And in fact, there's playfulness and gamification in adopting those tools in organisations.
[0:20:32] David Green: What advice would you give to those people listening who want to integrate digital coaching tools effectively into their organisation? You mentioned, for example, Delta did a pilot first. I mean, is that one of the tips that you would give?
[0:20:45] Anna Tavis: No, I think most companies are starting small and looking. The majority start with, let's say, middle-management levels, because these tools really, and we have to be totally transparent, it's a long way until we develop a top, top-level executive coach who will be fully automated. We still are going to be bringing human coaches to senior executives. However, the middle management, if you think about it, David, again multiple conversations that you've had with your guests, the role of the middle manager is so critical for organisations at the same time, it is really poorly designed that we expect managers to be both sort of coaches to their teams, and deliver and execute on their own goals and represent management, etc. So, there's an implicit conflict in the design of the management role. And so, imagine having to separate out the ability for that middle manager to bring in support, so that at least the basic level of management of coaching could be outsourced to these digital coaches.
A good example for that could be in a performance management process. One of the things, one of the challenges and tensions in performance management in organisations is exactly, is it about development or is it about assessment? And the way companies started to address it is scheduling more frequent check-ins with the manager. Four times minimum, etc, and they put the systems in, etc. But even four times, once a quarter, everyone will tell you, with the rate of change that's happening now, it's totally insufficient. And so, imagine that you have that 24/7, day in and day out, including weekends, coach available to you, to be honing in on your skills, to be asking questions, even basic questions around company policies or the company strategy, because these AI coaches, and we can talk about how they are positioned in a secure and private way, but most of these coaches are trained on the values and the documentation, all of the data available in that particular company. So, they're going to be able to say what the company's overall strategy is, and help you make that connection just in time.
Then, when you are ready for your conversation, your quarterly conversation with a manager, you come in prepared, you have all the data, as well as the manager is prepared and has all the data on your performance as needed. And imagine the level of the conversation that occurs when they finally meet face-to-face and as a human-to-human, where you can actually spend quality time taking your conversation to the next level.
[0:24:10] David Green: What are some of the common challenges or obstacles that occur when they're trying to implement digital coaching; and how do they overcome those?
[0:24:21] Anna Tavis: Yes, excellent question. Obviously, the top priority for all of these companies is security of data and privacy. So, therefore, most of the top vendors, and I've mentioned a few, BetterUp, Ezra, CoachHub, Valence, Torch, and a few others, it's very important to work with your vendor to ensure what kind of protocols your company requires. It goes through a lot of clearance, the same as any HRIS system or any other system that you might want to bring in. So, that privacy is behind the firewall of the particular organisation. At the same time, it has the benefit of being trained on, again, the strategy, the values, the policies, etc, of your organisation. So, your coach will be speaking in the voice of any manager who is well familiar with the organisation. So, that is the first obstacle to overcome and that will that happen with establishing a transparency and trust with the coaching vendor that the company decides to bring in. So, that's number one.
Then number two, I would think again around data that, how are the data that are collected across all of the coaching sessions going to be used? Who is going to see what kinds of conversations are happening. So, ensuring that only in the aggregated way, and I think there's a lot of opportunity, and we can talk about it, David, in taking those data that are coming out of the conversations with the coaches in a consistent way, so those data are protected, that they're not identifiable to a specific conversation that happens in this organisation. So, it's no different than if you're doing a survey or any other data mining in organisations, where they couldn't be identified to a specific person.
[0:26:45] David Green: How do you see these tools potentially transforming the way organisations gather and interpret employee feedback? And obviously we know that the key thing about employee feedback is you can have all the insights, but how do you drive action as well?
[0:28:10] Anna Tavis: Yeah. Honestly, I do not think that organisations will have a choice not to do it because of the speed of change, especially now with the AI coming in and in the need to reskill, upskill and accelerate learning in organisations. We all, I think, agree that the traditional training approach is so outdated and so inefficient and becomes a complete waste of resources in the company. So, I do think that this is an opportunity for every organisation to accelerate the process of learning. And the only way to do it is personalise it. The only way to personalise it is to have somebody kind of being an apprenticeship to this coach who can help you on a daily basis. I think we're going to see that rate of upscaling coming up at a greater velocity than anything we've seen before.
One of the challenges of any learning, and I'm in the learning profession, is the lack of personalisation. Because yes, we can identify with all the data that are available to us right now, we can say absolutely, we know what the gaps are, we know where we need to take our people, etc, etc. What we did not have is the way to get them there faster, and these digital tools are providing the how to the what and the why of workforce transformation that needs to happen and is happening now.
[0:30:04] David Green: Very good. We talked about this previously. The first thing that I thought about this was, okay, I've got a digital coach, what's happening with the data from that conversation that I'm having? You touched on that a little bit a few minutes ago. Again, maybe you can talk to some of the organisations that have actually deployed this already, how can organisations navigate data privacy and security while getting those insights? So, we talked about aggregations being part of that, but in more general terms, how have you seen organisations navigate this data privacy and security piece, and then obviously communicate that to employees?
[0:30:44] Anna Tavis: Yes, I think communication is really critical before you even launch any pilots. And it all comes with making sure that you have the right kind of agreements with the vendor, because just like with a survey, David, it's not going to be a surprise to you that the data stays with the vendor, and what the client gets are the trends. You could see, what are the things that are coming up consistently in the conversations in this division, right? Or, for Delta, what are we seeing on top-of-mind questions that again, the same gate agents are asking consistently? And that's where organisations can react. And so, it really is a relationship with a vendor where you trust them to deliver to you, in an aggregated way, trends and opportunities that they see coming out of the data. That's the only way I see it working and protecting the privacy of the employees and the privacy of the conversations. And the vendors are really prepared for that because, I mean, that's the number one concern that they're hearing from all of the companies they're engaging with.
[0:32:13] David Green: How do you see some of these AI and digital tools transforming how we work, I can ask you because you're an academic, I can ask you about the next decade. If I ask a practitioner about the next decade, they're like, "You have to think about the next decade". So, yeah, how do you see them transforming work over the next decade?
[0:32:32] Anna Tavis: Yeah, I do think that there is a lot of conversations about replacement of people in jobs. And I think what's missing out in that equation is how much we can do to help humans stay ahead of technology innovation. And that is only going to happen if we invest in accelerating learning for employees. Because these tools, David, are not just about learning new things, adjusting to the new mode of work, etc, they're also change agents. They're helping people manage psychologically the change that is happening. Because I think even strategic workforce planning, what is underrated is the level of anxiety and fear in the majority of people about this change.
So, imagine that you have a coach that not only helps you learn a new skill, but also helps you manage your psychological relationship with work that seems to be so tenuous, and your job is on the line. So, it not only gives you skills advice, but also prepares you for conversations with a manager, your career planning, your political savvy, in a sense, you mentioned storytelling with data, preparing for presentations to the senior management, to the board, etc, where it gives you feedback. There are incredible tools that help you just feel a lot more in control of the process than just thinking that you learn another coding language and that's going to get you to the next job. No, it helps holistically people to transition. And I think that we need to pay attention to that, that people can learn but as you know, if they're in fear, if they're concerned, they become very protective, defensive, and that stalls their learning. So, you have to create the environment that is conducive to learning. And that comes with a sense of control, support, growth. And the companies that are strategic about their next generation workforce are investing in supporting their employees in that way.
[0:35:20] David Green: You mentioned strategic workforce planning there, Anna. So, I'm going to move now to the question of the series. So, this is a question that we're asking every guest in this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. How do you leverage people analytics to inform strategic workforce planning?
[0:35:36] Anna Tavis: I want to take it back, David, to digital coaching, because people analytics really underlies all of these new tools and new methods of learning and doing strategic workforce planning. So, I think strategic workforce planning needs to graduate from thinking about jobs and kind of rigid definitions of you move from this job to the next, to this kind of dynamic and agile skills-based learning. And strategic workforce planning, again, traditionally was talking about from point A to point B as if there is a final destination. We need to think about it as a dynamic process which involves learning. And I think we will not be, and obviously I'm very biased, we will not be able to accomplish, as you know, a lot of organisations are struggling with that, this dynamic transition without introducing new ways of upskilling, reskilling, the 'how' of workforce planning.
So, to me, digital coaching and making these types of support systems available to every employee is a part of the solution to the strategic workforce planning down the road, how do we keep this as an ongoing process? And I want to repeat this, that I said in the very beginning, it's from 'just in time', to 'just in case', because there's so much uncertainty around the corner, and there's always going to be the next generation skillset that we will need to train people on. So, I think arming strategic workforce planning with the army of digital coaches is going to help organisations support their employees, not just from their planning, but also from employee empowerment through the process to be successful.
[0:37:57] David Green: Very good. I can't believe, Anna, we've already got to the end of our conversation. I'm going to ask you two questions to close, because we didn't actually cover this. Number one, please can you give an overview of what you and Woody cover in the digital coaching book, for those listeners that would like to find out more? It's available on Kogan page, by the way, you'll be able to get it on Amazon in whichever country you're in. And also, can you let people, listeners, know how they can stay in touch with you and follow you on social media and find out more about your work as well?
[0:38:26] Anna Tavis: Thanks so much, David, again for the opportunity. As far as the book is concerned, what you're going to find there is more of a historical perspective, how executive coaching evolved and where it's going. You're also going to find chapters on what's happening in sports, and how sports has served as a sort of template of where we're going in organisations, as well as health and wellbeing. Those are the three trends that we tracked. And you're also going to see specific case studies of companies that successfully implemented those tools, and their challenges and opportunities and what they discovered. So, it's a very practical book. And if you have any questions, because again, this was a snapshot in time and we've already developed the technology so much further, so feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. I'm at NYU, easy to find, but I do post regularly on LinkedIn and will be happy to expand the network of people interested in these particular tools.
[0:39:38] David Green: Great. Well, Anna, thank you very much for the second time for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast. I look forward to seeing you in person at some point in the coming months.
[0:39:48] Anna Tavis: In New York, David. We want you back in New York. You're very popular here, especially among NYU students.