BetterUp

What BetterUp is

BetterUp is a coaching platform sold to employers. It combines one-to-one sessions with human coaches, AI coaching inside everyday work tools and analytics that tie the results to business measures, and the company calls the whole package the Human Transformation Platform. It is built for HR, talent and L&D teams at large organizations that want to develop leaders, managers and wider staff at scale; the About page says it has been "Pressure tested by 750+ enterprise customers." According to the same page, BetterUp began when co-founder Alexi Robichaux hit burnout as a young executive and discovered how much coaching could help, and its mission is "to help people live with greater clarity, purpose, and energy at work, and to help organizations turn that human capacity into sustained performance." The site footer lists offices in Austin, Texas, and Toronto.

Four products

The platform is sold as four products aimed at different layers of a workforce. BetterUp Lead gives "critical talent the coaching and AI support to develop the judgment and clarity your business needs at the top." BetterUp Manage "gives managers always-on coaching to develop their teams, execute on priorities, and improve performance." BetterUp Grow brings AI coaching to the entire workforce, "personalized to the skills your business actually requires," and BetterUp Ready offers resilience and adaptability coaching for people working through organizational change. The solutions menu maps these to leadership development, manager effectiveness, AI coaching for every employee and workforce resilience, with use cases for AI innovation, change readiness and talent retention, and a separate offer for government.

How the coaching works

The coaching page describes three modalities. Human coaching pairs a member one to one with a certified coach: the page says BetterUp's AI matches each member to one of its 4,000+ global ICF-certified coaches, using their goals, preferences and assessment data, and adjusts the match if a better fit becomes clear. The About page puts the network at 4,000+ coaches across 70+ countries. AI coaching delivers nudges, prompts and reflections in the moment, inside tools the member already uses, which the page lists as Slack, Teams, Workday, Salesforce and calendars. Specialist coaching pairs someone facing a specific challenge, such as a leadership transition, a communication problem or a stressful event outside work, with a coach who has expertise in that area.

Members start with science-based assessments built on what BetterUp calls its Whole Person model, which measures the levers the company ties to performance. From there, cohort group work, on-demand digital modules and one-to-one and group coaching sessions feed a personalized plan. The coaching page also draws a line between coaching and its neighbors: therapy looks inward and backward and is delivered by licensed therapists, mentors share their own experience, while coaches are trained to "ask the kind of powerful questions that help you think bigger, see clearer, and move forward with purpose."

Fitting the program to the company

The platform FAQ says BetterUp "configures to your existing leadership competencies, values, and organizational language," and the About page says programs can be custom-built for executives, managers, high-potential talent and frontline teams, aligned with goals such as AI adoption, leadership bench strength and change readiness. The FAQ lists Workday, LMSs, Microsoft Teams and Slack among the integrations. Impact is tracked through performance analytics that the site says connect behavior change to KPIs like retention, engagement, performance uplift and goal achievement, and the About page says BetterUp links behavioral shifts to measures a CFO and board already watch, such as regretted attrition, internal mobility and team performance. Global support and implementation teams, the same page adds, work with a customer's HRIS, IT and InfoSec staff.

Results the company reports

The homepage, the About page and the customer page carry the same four headline figures: a 41% lift in the percentage of employees rated as top-tier, a 14x average return on investment, a 50% reduction in voluntary turnover rate and a 7.5% increase in revenue. A footnote says they come from a "comparison study of BetterUp users vs. non-users" that combines BetterUp engagement data with customers' performance and turnover data. The platform page adds that companies integrating BetterUp into Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workday "see 47% higher performance, 5x higher retention, and 7x higher net-new sales revenue." The coaching page cites conservative estimates that put the ROI of its enterprise coaching at 3.5X to 5X.

Case studies put names to these claims: Moderna with a 16% lift in team cohesion, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team with 21% productivity gains, and the United States Air Force, which the platform page says accelerated mission-readiness by 13%. The homepage adds that employees are 45% less likely to leave Salesforce when engaged with BetterUp Ready, and the customer stories run from Google, Rolls-Royce and Workday to Smallpdf, Twilio and the City of Santa Monica.

Security and privacy

For an enterprise buyer the trust section is detailed. The About page lists an ISO 27001 certified information security program, independent SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports, GDPR and CCPA governance validations and EU US Data Privacy Framework certification, and the platform page adds ISO 42001. Individual coaching conversations stay confidential and are not shared with the employer, aggregated insights are shared only when there is enough data to protect members' anonymity, and the company says it does not use customer or user data, or let third-party AI vendors use it, to train frontier or foundation models. A Customer Trust Portal gives security teams access to reports and policies under NDA.

The research behind it

BetterUp Labs runs the company's research, led by Chief Scientist Kate Niederhoffer, and the About page lists a science board that includes Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Quinetta Roberson and Martin E.P. Seligman. The company also runs the BetterUp Center for Daring Leadership as a partnership and hosts events such as a session with Cisco's Chief People Officer on scaling AI without losing human connection.

Pricing

BetterUp publishes no prices. The route in is a personalized demo or a conversation with the sales team, which the About page says covers how BetterUp can help a company reach its goals, how it fits the existing environment and the impact to expect in year one.

Who it suits

BetterUp suits large employers that treat leadership and manager development as a business priority and want evidence for it: an HR or talent team that needs coaching for executives, managers and broad staff from one vendor, wants it inside Slack, Teams and Workday, and has to report results to a CFO or board. Its security credentials and Trust Portal suit regulated industries, and the government offer and case studies with the US Air Force and the City of Santa Monica show it sells to the public sector as well.

It is not aimed at individuals looking for a coach, or at coaches looking for software to run their own practice. The offer is designed and sold as an organizational program, so buyers should expect a sales process and an implementation plan rather than a sign-up page.