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How The Very Group Built a Coaching Ecosystem

One of the UK’s largest retailers didn’t come to coaching to fix a problem. They came to build on what was already working.

 

The Challenge

The Very Group’s colleague listening survey already returned the highest diversity-and-inclusion score they measure. Rather than treat that as the ceiling, they asked what a more connected, better-designed coaching offer could add. The goal was to make coaching part of how people experience work — connected to leadership development, talent reviews, inclusion and career development — rather than a standalone programme sitting alongside everything else.

 

What they built

Working with Thrive, Very created a full coaching ecosystem: one-to-one coaching across exec, leadership and talent pipeline populations; group coaching for colleagues returning from maternity leave (now five cohorts deep through the Return and Rise programme); a programme for neurodivergent colleagues; coaching offered to the co-chairs of all nine colleague-led networks. Everything connected, everything measured, and all of it sitting inside Very’s own development platform in their own brand.

 

The results

97% of participants rated the coaching experience excellent. Resourcefulness increased by 29%, optimism by 24%, confidence by 23%. 100% put actions into practice within 30 days. 90% saw lasting impact. Satisfaction improved 4 percentage points on the same period the previous year — and Very’s investment keeps growing.

 

“Coaching has the biggest impact when it’s not treated as a standalone activity.”

Kim Pritchard at The Very Group describes a business where coaching is connected to leadership development, talent reviews, inclusion and career development — so it becomes part of the whole colleague experience, not something added on top of it.

What Thrive made possible 

Thrive’s platform enabled Very to bring together one-to-one coaching, group programmes, targeted interventions and a quarterly impact report for the CPO — all within a single connected system. The result is a coaching culture that reaches every level of the organisation, and evidence of its impact that leaders can act on.


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