From Day One to One Day. After endless Coffee runs, building, dismantling and building again. We are super excited to launch our most-ambitious and awaited product – Peoplebox Coaching.
The journey that brought us to this vision. Here’s our story ?
Our Story
Alagu and I joined Practo in 2014, a health-tech startup with less than 300 employees. In the next 2.5 years, it grew to over 2,500 employees and we became from individual contributors to managers to managers of managers.
We saw the pains of a hyper-growth start-up first-hand and the challenges a manager face in her quest to reach the stars while keeping her flock together.
Two things helped us hugely – Counseling in our personal life and Coaching in our professional life.
We quit Practo to start Askmile, an online counselling start-up. As Askmile grew, few companies approached us to seek help in developing a culture of high engagement and performance. We knew the answer lies in building great managers through Coaching. That’s when Peoplebox was born with a simple vision –
Bring the power of coaching in the hands of every employee to help them grow & succeed.
The problem was unlike Counselling, Coaching is damn expensive ($300-400 an hour), which makes it exclusive only to top leadership and far from the hands of first-line managers.
We knew the only way to achieve our vision is to make it technology-driven. We built Nova, our AI Coach and learned that tech-driven coaching can be effective only if it’s coupled with powerful people insights and intelligent tools for managers (1:1s, Goals, check-ins).
For many months, we kept our heads down and built systems to create these insights and performance tools that can turbo-charge coaching.
Today a key part of that vision is coming true ? .
The Problem
What’s common between every CEO, Business Head, HR and manager? They all strive for the same outcome – achieve great business results and retain their top talent.
Covid-19 has changed the future of work more in the last 1.5 years than in the previous 20 combined. Remote and hybrid work is the new normal and with the ability to hire anyone from anywhere, the talent war got even more fierce.
The role of managers, especially the first-line, is now more critical than ever to drive results & retention.
People don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses
75% of people who leave cite their manager as no. 1 reason. Great managers, on the other hand, are key to help their teams consistently deliver exceptional performance.
At Peoplebox our premise is, there is no better way to build great managers than insights and tech driven Personalised Coaching
What is Peoplebox?
At Peoplebox.ai, we have a comprehensive people platform helping leadership, business heads, HR and managers to –
- Create powerful people insights using automated engagement surveys
- Drive more results with easy alignment and tracking of OKRs/ Goals
- Build strong candor between managers and their teams through effective 1:1s and check-ins
- Enable deep personal relationships between peers through Coffee Connect
Introducing Peoplebox Coaching
The best way to understand Peoplebox Coaching is to imagine every manager in the company has a coach (real + AI), who has access to team’s OKRs, 360-degree feedback, and real-time performance & productivity of every team member. The coach uses these insights to help managers identify red flags and provide personalized support, motivation and accountability to succeed.
The core objective of Peoplebox Coaching is to empower managers drive better team results and retention (both easily measurable through OKRs achieved and employee turnover) through the trio of
- People Insights ( through surveys, check-ins)
- Intelligent Tools (1:1s, OKRs, Coffee Connect)
- Combination of AI + human coaching
The Product – How does it work
There are two aspects of Peoplebox coaching
- Nova, your AI Coach
- Your Leadership Coach (human)
Nova captures all the insights from the manager’s and her team’s activities and shares a weekly insights report with the manager and the coach. In addition, Nova provides timely nudges, suggestion talking points for 1:1s, OKR check-in reminders and suggested byte-size learnings.
We understand the power of rapport in coaching that only humans can provide and is out of scope for AI. Peoplebox has skilled leadership coaches to provide personalised support and be the accountability partner of managers and help them be great leaders.
Having a real human coach gives the manager a strong feeling of having someone who really cares for their success.
The leadership coach has access to all the insights and tools on Peoplebox Engage & Perform platform. She/ he can suggest action items, goals, and 1:1 talking points for the managers.
The start of Coaching – Setting up OKRs & 1:1s
Performance coaching starts with managers identifying their key business goals (OKR, KPI, KRA or any other form) for the quarter/ month and write it in Peoplebox with a clear timeline.
The second thing that the coach enables managers is to establish a regular cadence of 1:1s with each direct report (in case it doesn’t exist).
Coach also runs manager-effectiveness survey to understand the team’s engagement, feedback, and manager’s improvement areas. It discusses the engagement report with the managers, understands any challenges they are facing in achieving the goals or leading the team.
Weekly Coaching Communication
The coach (both AI + skilled coach) interacts with managers atleast once every week through calls or messaging.
Coach provides personalised support to managers in the form of powerful questions, suggested 1:1s talking points and contextual byte-size learning.
How Peoplebox Coaching is different from Executive Coaching
- Its business results & retention-driven. The objective is very clear – help the manager’s team achieve more goals & retain talent.
- It makes use of team feedback & people insights (from check-ins & surveys) as well as performance tools (1:1s, Goals, Recognition, etc) to coach managers.
- It’s very affordable (1/10th the cost of executive coaching) yet more effective than any alternative form of building great managers.
Who can sign-up for Peoplebox Coaching?
Its primarily for Business Heads, HR, Chief-of-staffs who are looking to empower their managers and help them convert goals into results as well drive team engagement.
Most of the people who have implemented or expressed interest in Peoplebox Coaching are CTO/ Head of Engineering, Chief People Officers, Head of Sales and Head of Customer Success.
Does it need to be implemented company-wide?
No, you can start it with a minimum of 3 managers.
What do managers need to do to use Peoplebox Coaching?
They need to put their Goals/ OKRs and 1:1s in Peoplebox. Its fine if the company is not using OKR as a whole. Its also fine if the company doesn’t have a culture of regular 1:1s.
Who are Peoplebox Coaches?
We have certified coaches on board with experience in leadership development and manager’s coaching.
How will Coaches interact with managers?
Coaches interact with managers through a combination of regular calls and messaging on Peoplebox platform (also integrated with Slack, Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp).
What’s the Impact of Peoplebox Coaching on business?
- Managers consistently delivering better results with clear goals
- Team making fast and meaningful decisions that drive business growth.
- Reduce employee turnover (attrition) and drive employee engagement.
- Build great candor between managers and their team members.
- Build a culture of coaching in the teams.
- Save time for leadership, HR, & Business Heads in fixing different team issues.
- No extra time taken in managers development unlike a 2-3 days training.
- Retain your managers by empowering them on a growth path and showing you care for them and their development.
What are the behavior changes one can expect in Managers from Peoplebox Coaching?
Here are some impactful behavior changes we are seeing in managers using Peoplebox Coaching –
- Regular creation, tracking, and alignment of Goals/ OKRs so everyone in the teams is on the same page on top priorities and their status.
- Help team with role clarity and align their day to day tasks with company goals.
- Build a culture of recognition (it’s usually the lowest-ranked engagement driver).
- Build a cadence of regular 1:1s with all direct reports.
- Ensure 1:1s are effective and actionable with proper documentation.
- Have monthly/ quarterly career conversations with each direct report.
- Convert engagement feedback into Actions (measured quarterly through manager effectiveness surveys)
- Coach their direct reports and other leads/ managers in their teams
Join the waitlist – Help your managers drive results
We are currently in closed beta and only working with our existing customers. If this sounds interesting, please request a demo here and we will be happy to provide you a sneak peek of our coaching platform and put you on priority as soon as we launch it to the public.
Wish us luck ? in our vision to build great managers and empower every employee to grow and succeed through the power of coaching ?
