Be Business Fit

I've spent 30 years working in HR, across the public and private sectors. And for a long time, I kept having the same conversations.

Managers promoted into roles without the support they needed. Senior leaders are quietly working with coaches but not talking about it. Organisations investing in leadership training and then watching as the behaviour does not stick, because there was nothing to embed it. And underneath all of that, a steady flow of grievances and disciplinary investigations that, in many cases, didn't need to happen.

I knew coaching was part of the answer. What I didn't have was the data to prove it.

When I started looking for research on coaching access in UK businesses, I couldn't find what I needed. So I ran it myself and that's where The Strength Report came from.

The 2026 questionnaire opens on 13th April. Here's what it covers and why I think it's worth a few minutes of your time.

What Is the Be Business Fit Strength Report Questionnaire?

It's a structured online survey built around The Strength Model, my framework for assessing leadership health across five areas: values, behaviour, team dynamics, communication and alignment to business goals.

It takes 6 to 8 minutes. Questions are single-choice, multiple-choice and short open-text. No login. No setup.

It covers:

• Whether coaching exists in your organisation, who has access and who pays for it
• What stops wider access to leadership development
• How training is supported (or not) after the event
• What leaders are actually trying to solve when they seek support
• New for 2026: how AI is changing the conversations leaders are expected to manage, and whether they feel prepared

Responses are anonymous. No individual or organisation is identified in the published report.

Why I Run It Every Year

When I go into organisations to carry out investigations, I see the same thing repeatedly. A difficult situation that has been building for months. A manager who didn't have the support, the confidence, or the space to tackle it early. And by the time I arrive, it's formal, it's expensive and it's damaging for everyone involved.

I run The Strength Report because I want to understand where the gaps are and make a proper case for closing them. Not through anecdote, but through data.

When I approached financial directors in previous roles about investing in coaching, they wanted to see numbers. Fair enough. You have to get past the business case before you get anywhere. The Strength Report exists to give leaders, HR professionals and coaches the evidence they need to have that conversation more effectively.

I decided to repeat it annually because the picture changes. What was true about access to coaching in 2024 looked different in 2025. A single data point is context. Repeated data is something you can actually act on.

What Participants Receive

Everyone who completes the questionnaire gets early access to The Strength Report 2026 before it's published publicly. That means seeing the full findings ahead of the wider market, including:

• Findings mapped to The Strength Model. How the data connects to the leadership challenges organisations actually face
• Peer benchmarks. Where UK businesses sit on coaching access, leadership confidence and development investment
• Role and sector breakdowns. How findings shift by business size, seniority and context
• Practical guidance throughout. Not just what the data shows, but what to do with it

HR directors can use it to build the internal case for coaching investment. Employment lawyers can share the findings with clients. Business owners can use the benchmarks to decide where leadership development happens first.

What the 2025 Strength Report Revealed

The 2025 report drew 170 responses from leaders and professionals across the UK: business owners, senior executives, middle managers and HR professionals. It was peer reviewed by four independent coaches.
When I got the results back, a lot of what I had suspected for years was sitting there in the data. That was both a relief and a frustration.

Access exists. But it doesn't travel far.

75% of respondents had experienced 1:1 coaching, and in 71% of those cases, the organisation paid for it. So the investment is happening. But only 52% said coaching takes place in their organisation at all, and where it does, it concentrates at the senior and executive level.

114 respondents said they believe coaching should be available to anyone. In practice, middle managers and team leads largely go without it.

Most training spend isn't sticking.

58% of respondents had attended management or leadership training in the previous five years. Fewer than half had any coaching support afterwards. People left training knowing what to do, and then couldn't apply it once they were back under day-to-day pressure. One respondent put it plainly: "Training was great, but without follow-up, I slipped back into old habits."

This is something I see constantly. The theory lands. The behaviour doesn't change. Coaching after training is where that gap closes, and it's the first thing that gets cut from the budget.

The barriers are the same every time, which is telling.

The top four reasons coaching doesn't reach further into organisations:

• Cost: 104 respondents
• People not understanding what leadership coaching actually is: 96
• Leaders being scared to ask for it: 96
• Difficulty quantifying ROI: 78

None of these is structural. They're cultural. And they're solvable.

The maths of inaction.

A single unresolved grievance investigation costs upwards of £22,000. Add suspension cover at £4,500, diverted manager time, potential legal fees from £5,000, and recruitment if someone leaves at £6,000 to £12,000 per role. A coaching programme with Be Business Fit of six 90-minute sessions over six months runs between £1,500 and £4,000, depending on scope.

I included this comparison in the 2025 report because I wanted to make the conversation easier to have internally. The numbers do that.

The 2026 edition builds on all of this, with new questions on AI's growing role in workplace conversations and whether leaders feel equipped to manage it.

Why I'd Like You to Complete It

Six to eight minutes. Anonymous. No follow-up sales call.

Every response strengthens the dataset. If you lead people, your experience is relevant whether or not you currently use coaching. If your organisation doesn't use coaching, your perspective on what's getting in the way is exactly the kind of data that helps others in the same position make the case for change.
You'll get early access to the 2026 report when it publishes, before it goes out publicly.

The questionnaire opens on 13th April 2026.

Sam Heighway is the founder of Be Business Fit, a leadership consultancy specialising in behaviour-led coaching, conflict prevention and leadership development. The Strength Report is published annually. The 2025 edition drew 170 responses from UK leaders and professionals and was peer reviewed by four independent coaches. All data is anonymised.