AI Coaches help employees and managers get guidance that reflects your organization's values, career framework, and policies. By uploading company resources and configuring Coaches, you can provide review guidance, career support, role-play training, and answers to common workplace questions, all within Small Improvements.
What are AI Coaches?
AI Coaches are configurable assistants that help employees and managers navigate Performance Reviews, career development, workplace policies, and other HR-related topics.
Unlike general-purpose AI tools, AI Coaches can draw on company-specific resources you upload, such as your values, career matrix, and internal guidelines. This helps ensure guidance stays aligned with your organization's expectations.
Depending on how a Coach is configured, it may appear in the dedicated AI Coach area of Small Improvements, directly within features such as Performance Reviews, or in other locations set up by your HR administrators.
Before you begin
Start by gathering the resources that define how your organization operates.
Common examples include company values, career frameworks or career matrices, performance expectations, internal policies and guidelines, review-writing guidance, and HR and compliance resources.
The quality of these resources directly influences the quality and relevance of the guidance Coaches provide.
Tip: Start with your company values and career matrix. These resources tend to have the biggest impact on review quality, career conversations, and employee development.
Upload company resources
Go to Settings.
Open AI Settings.
Select the Configure Coaches tab.
Under the Resources tab, upload the resources you want Coaches to use.
Save your changes.
Once uploaded, these resources can be referenced by Coaches throughout Small Improvements.
Configure AI Coaches
Small Improvements includes pre-built Coaches that are ready to use out of the box.
To configure them:
Go to Settings.
Open AI Settings.
Select the Configure Coaches tab.
Open the Coach you want to configure.
Choose which resources and data the Coach can access.
Select where the Coach should appear in the platform.
Save your changes.
You can adjust each Coach independently to match its intended use case.
Customize Coach behavior
You can fine-tune pre-built Coaches to better reflect your organization's needs. For example, you might configure a Coach to evaluate Self-Assessments against company values, consider a career matrix when reviewing Performance feedback, help managers prepare for difficult conversations, or support employees with career development questions.
This allows different Coaches to serve different audiences while staying aligned with your internal guidance.
Create custom Coaches
If you need more control, you can create your own Coaches. Custom Coaches let you define the Coach's purpose, how it interacts with users, what information it can access, and where it appears in Small Improvements.
Examples include reviewing Self-Assessments against company values, suggesting development Objectives based on Review history, providing career-growth guidance using a career framework, supporting manager training and role-play exercises, and helping employees understand company policies.
Note: Think carefully about which resources and data each Coach can access. Limiting access to only what a Coach needs helps keep guidance focused and relevant.
Common use cases
Performance Reviews. Coaches can help employees and managers prepare stronger Reviews by drawing on previous Reviews, Feedback history, Objectives, career frameworks, and company values. This supports more consistent and actionable review content.
Career development. Career-focused Coaches can help employees understand expectations for their current role, skills needed for future growth, areas for development, and career progression paths.
Policy and workplace guidance. Coaches can help employees find information in your uploaded resources, making policies and guidelines easier to understand and apply.
Manager training and role-play. Managers can use Coaches to prepare for challenging conversations, including performance discussions, career conversations, salary discussions, and sensitive employee matters. By combining company resources with relevant employee context, Coaches can provide more tailored guidance.
Best practices
Upload clear, well-maintained company resources. Start with a small number of focused Coaches, and give each one a specific purpose. Review Coach outputs regularly and refine configurations as needed. Use company values and career frameworks to create consistent guidance across the organization.
Starting simple makes it easier to understand what is helpful for your teams and expand over time.