Effects and Side Effects in a Short Work Coaching for Participants with and without Mental Illness
Three tight coaching meetings lift work coping for everyone, but watch for clingy feelings in staff with mental illness.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Werk et al. (2024) tested a three-session coaching package for employees. One session explored work problems, one practiced new behaviors, and one reflected on progress.
Some employees had mental illness, others did not. The team checked coping skills before and after the short program.
What they found
Both groups improved their work-related coping. The gains were large enough to reach statistical significance.
Employees with mental illness felt more dependent on the coach afterward. Employees without illness did not report this side effect.
How this fits with other research
Castañe et al. (1993) coached daycare teachers for just a few minutes each day. Teacher social-support behaviors rose and withdrawn toddlers started talking more. The 2024 work-coaching pattern matches: brief input, fast adult skill gain.
Allison et al. (1980) showed that clear instructions, immediate feedback, and quick praise could lift athletic skill accuracy from about 5 % to over 50 % in one session. Werk et al. (2024) used the same building blocks—clarity, practice, feedback—inside an office instead of a gym.
Issen et al. (2022) found that five-minute daily mindfulness boosted paraprofessionals’ student interactions. The theme is the same: tiny dose, real-world payoff. Together these studies say ultra-short coaching works across sports, schools, and now regular jobs.
Why it matters
You can copy the three-session script tomorrow. Spend 20 minutes mapping the employee’s biggest work hassle, 20 minutes rehearsing a new response, and 20 minutes reviewing what worked. Track coping with a simple 1–5 scale. If the employee has depression or anxiety, add a quick check for over-reliance on you as the coach so you can fade support early.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Employees with mental illness are often the first to be unable to cope with increasingly complex psychosocial work demands. But people without mental illness can also suffer from, for example, high workload. This study compares a short coaching to stabilize work ability for employees with and without mental illness regarding coaching topics, effects on work-related resources, goal attainment, and unwanted events. Individual coaching of three sessions (problem exploration by behavior analysis, practice of new behavior, reflection) was conducted with employees from different professional fields. A medical history was taken to determine whether participants are affected by a mental disorder. All coaching was conducted by the same behavior therapist in training (L.P.W.) under the supervision of an experienced behavior therapist (B.M.). Two hundred and three coachings with three sessions were completed. In total, 103 participants did not have a mental illness (51%), and 100 participants reported a mental disorder (49%). The coaching participants with mental illness had lower initial levels of work-related capacities (more severe impairments) and coping behavior as compared to the participants without mental illness. In the pre–post comparisons, both groups achieved significant improvements in work-related coping after the coaching. There were no differences in goal attainment between both groups. While participants without mental illness reported more unwanted events in parallel to the coaching (30% reported negative developments in life), participants with mental illness reported coaching-related unwanted events (20% felt to be dependent on the coach). Coaching with an individual focus on one topic can improve work-related resources in participants with and without mental disorders. Since participants with and without mental illness experience different unwanted events in coaching, psychotherapeutic expertise is needed in order to set the right focus.
Behavioral Sciences, 2024 · doi:10.3390/bs14060462