ACCA (the Association of Certified Accountants) has released a report, entitled: “The Coaching and Mentoring Revolution – is it working?”

The survey was conducted among 700 ACCA members in 170 countries, and revealed that most companies don’t use training in their day-to-day working life.

“Although coaching plays an important role in enhancing performance and leadership skills, increasing self-awareness and enhancing communication skills, ironically, although 85% of respondents believed it was beneficial to use coaches, over 60% of organisations do not use accredited internal or external coaches to develop the competencies of finance professionals,” says Head of ACCA South Africa, Dr Quinton Simpson.

Simpson attributes the limited use of coaching among finance professionals to a lack of understanding of good practice. “Buy in from senior management remains problematical,” Simpson says.

He raises as another concern the fact that coaching has generally been restricted to senior management levels. “ACCA believes the profession would benefit from a far wider adoption of coaching practices at all management levels.

However, if we are going to increase buy-in, stakeholders need to be informed of the cost benefits of coaching practices,” he explains.

Simpson cites coaching as best practice, and reminds that coaching is firmly entrenched in leading firms such as Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

“In the current economic downturn, training budgets are likely to be one of the first areas that are likely to be trimmed. It is imperative, therefore, that the profession recognises that training provides a very good return on investment.

“ACCA urges organisations to provide the necessary training so that finance professionals, at both senior and middle management level, can become accredited as coaches. This would raise the bar in terms of performance and would also propel organisations to the next level,” Simpson concludes.