Coaching plays an important role in business, helping employees gain new insight and skills in their jobs. Some organizations handle the training of coaches internally, while other human resource departments encourage their coaches and managers to get certified in coaching. What are the benefits of coaching certification? Is it necessary?

In order to answer that question, you first need to decide on the goals you want to reach through the use of coaching, according to business consultants Ellen Kumata and Colleen Gentry. You need to set up clear objectives that you want your coaching to accomplish. How do you expect the coaching certification training to improve the performance of your coaches, to help you reach your goals? And will that improvement be great enough to justify the cost?

Sometimes a certification program does not provide enough of the nuts and bolts advice for your particular business that  you may be looking for. Rather, the program focuses on a general model of coaching that can be used by many different organizations. It helps people to understand the process of coaching itself.

You need to choose carefully the type of coaching program you want, Kumata and Gentry say. You need to figure out what kind of support you want your coaches to give; you need to make sure that that support matches your company’s goals and strategies. Do you want your coaches to guide a feedback process on performance, such as 360 degree interviews, or to help with orienting new employees, or develop new skills? The amount of training a coach will need depends on the kind of coaching he or she will be doing.

You may want to consult with outside experts with experience in developing coaching programs for businesses.

And, if you want to get the most out of your training of coaches, you need to create an environment in your company where coaching is valued and practiced widely, according to Kumata and Gentry. You need to find out who in your company is the best at coaching and use these individuals as a nucleus around which you build your program. You also need to establish evaluation methods for your coaching and ways of measuring coaching effectiveness to see how well your coaching programs are working.

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