Optimizing Virtual Coach for Managers, Coaches & HR

A quick google search on ‘how best to give employee feedback’ will bring up a wealth of resources, approximately 395,000 results worth. Among them you will easily find three step guides, five-minute videos, ten helpful tips, and for those of you that are more analogue minded: a 100-page e-book. All of this is to say: there’s no simple answer.

Another common theme among the most popular resources was how uncomplicated or condensed people wanted the answer to be. Despite the nuances and complexities involved in providing effective employee feedback, readers seemingly only found time for bite-sized advice, confirming a long-held suspicion that Managers and Coaches are, more often than not, time-poor.

An article published by McKinsey in 2023 found out exactly how time-poor managers are becoming. With administrative tasks, an individual workload and a growing emphasise on output and metrics, Managers overall are spending “less than a third of their time actually managing people.”

 

So, what’s the solution?

 

Here at Halo Feedback, we reckon the key is in working smarter, not harder, the heart of which lies in innovation. In today’s climate, that means leveraging AI to improve efficiency and optimization, while still preserving the need for human judgment and care.

We’ve just released a major upgrade to our AI-powered Virtual Coach, a platform add-on that delivers real-time insights, contextual intelligence, and simplified data analysis. It transforms how individual users interact with their assessment results, and it can also revolutionize the Manager or HR debrief process.

In our experience, a typical 360-degree survey de-brief or coaching session requires much more time than the meeting itself. Managers and Coaches often spend:

• 1–2.5 hours analyzing results in preparation for a one-on-one debrief,
• 1–2 hours on the debrief session, and
• 1–2 hours on post-debrief follow-up and development planning.

 

This means that for a single participant, the total time potentially spent can range from 3 to 6.5 hours. It’s a substantial workload for any manager or coach…and that’s before considering multiple team members. Suddenly, a week can be eaten up entirely by assessment debriefs, leaving other priorities trailing behind. You might think all of this is just a necessary evil, but a survey carried out by Atlassian in 2024 suggests it might not even be time well spent. Atlassian found that “people felt…meetings were ineffective 72% of the time, due to a lack of clarity, no agenda, and repetitive information.” It seems people can easily get sidetracked at work, now where was I?

 

How can Virtual Coach help?

 

Simply put, Virtual Coach is fully integrated across the platform and able to streamline the entire process.

Virtual Coach is built on natural language processing and is equipped with generative AI. Meaning that It’s able to understand questions in context and tailor responses, Managers can now engage with feedback by asking questions of the data to learn more. AI is able to evaluate large volumes of information, such as feedback and behaviour patterns to uncover trends and insights that may be overlooked by traditional techniques. This data-driven approach improves both the accuracy and reliability of the report.

Understanding the data couldn’t be easier, but we’ve also equipped Virtual Coach with the function to generate debrief prompts, actionable suggestions and conversational cues to support and guide Managers and Coaches when it comes to delivering constructive and unbiased debriefs.

Virtual Coach can be employed as a true digital agent, ready to support Managers and Coaches throughout the entire process of 360 degree feedback. Empowering Managers, Coaches and HR specialists to deliver feedback with confidence.

And if you still find yourself wanting a tidy ‘three step guide’ well then Virtual Coach can deliver that too.

 

 

Published by Halo Feedback. Written by Erin Power.