As the talent shortage continues and employers worldwide struggle to find skilled workers, the need to grow and retain your own talent becomes more and more urgent.
A LinkedIn survey found that 94% of employees said they would stay at a job longer if employers provided training and development opportunities. However, our research has found that only 27% of employees consider their managers helpful in their career development.
Providing the resources for your staff to grow drives employee engagement, boosting retention rates. But sometimes, just pointing employees toward a series of on-demand courses with little or no follow-up isn’t enough.
One of the best ways for managers to support their staff’s career progression, enhance their company loyalty, and see immediate performance results is through workplace or career coaching.
What is Coaching?
Workplace coaching is a professional relationship focused on advancing toward the goals and aspirations of the individual being coached. It’s a reciprocal relationship between the coach and employee, aimed at fostering effective two-way communication and opening the door to enhanced performance.
It is an essential tool for equipping employees with the skills and knowledge necessary to navigate the challenges of the modern workplace, and as such, it usually involves some form of training or upskilling. Coaching is sometimes used during change events brought about by technological advancements and shifting organizational structures.
How Career Coaching Sparks Employee Growth
Below, we look at a few ways coaching can benefit your company.
1. Empowerment
Whether it’s due to imposter syndrome, evolving role demands, new tech, or otherwise, more than 80% of employees believe they lack the skills for their position. Career coaching can change this.
Coaches help individuals identify strengths and empower them to meet challenges head-on and confidently.
A good coach can assist with goal setting, self-reflection, and progress tracking. These skills empower workers to speak up about concerns, set goals, and develop methods for reaching those goals.
2. Improved Communication Skills
Coaches help individuals develop the necessary communication skills that will benefit them throughout their careers, set the stage for business success and feed their leadership potential.
As an outsider looking in, coaches can identify areas where employees’ communication skills need improvement. Coaches can guide a participant as they practice composing clear and concise emails or being assertive in person or over the phone.
Additionally, coaches can teach vital skills to boost how your company leaders interact with individuals who have different personality types, cultural backgrounds, or ranges of experience.
3. Alignment of Individual Growth with Company Goals
Improved communication between the coach and employee will also enable the employee to better understand and internalize your organization’s goals and strategies. When individual role responsibilities are tied to larger organizational goals, motivation and follow-through improves, sometimes dramatically.
4. Enhanced Performance
For employees who have gone through a coaching program, 65% say that coaching has improved one or more of their professional skills and has been a vital tool to help them cope with a constantly changing work environment.
There are many ways that coaching can improve an individual’s professional skillset. For example, a good coach will acknowledge and encourage positive behaviors such as good communication and giving credit where it’s due. Coaches pose questions and share observations that encourage staff to improve.
When coaching individuals for leadership positions, coaches can demonstrate new techniques to help them focus on pressing issues, brainstorm solutions, set practical goals, and improve team management skills. Coaches can teach leaders how to professionally and effectively call out team members who are not on the right track or pulling their weight.
How Career Coaching Benefits the Business
Coaching is about more than just developing an excellent staff – it’s about building a better business. A positive leadership framework can help your organization develop and achieve business goals.
Leadership development improves organizations in several ways, including:
1. Improves Company Culture
Consistent responses to employee work and practical guidance from staff leaders revitalize team members and positively impact overall staff performance. Businesses that combine coaching programs with staff training can see an 80% increase in company productivity. The shared desire between leaders and other staff to perform well can shape an inclusive, positive, and open company culture.
2. Improves Retention
Many employers felt the impact of employee turnover very deeply during The Great Resignation. High employee turnover is an expensive loss – but the good news is that employers can take steps to reduce unnecessary turnover.
When retention is low, there are long-term effects lasting weeks or months. And when multiple positions are affected, it becomes a chronic problem.
Professional development opportunities, including career coaching, make employees feel valued by their company. This leads to closer identification with company goals, higher job satisfaction and better job performance, all of which feed retention.
3. Aids Business Goals
When strategically deploying coaching in your organization, you are thoughtfully align your program to your overall business and talent goals, helping to build strong, stable foundations for employee innovation, long-term growth and increased profits. They help build your business to where you want it to be.
When you strengthen the skills of your critical employees, your entire organization becomes more productive. In fact, coaching top leadership can improve your business’s ROI by more than seven times.
How to Set Up a Career Coaching Program
Now that we’ve discussed the “why,” here are some steps you can take to ensure a successful coaching program for your organization.
1. Foster Excitement About the Program
An employee’s ability to work with a coach should be presented as a rewarding opportunity. Growth should be encouraged, even when an employee is already doing good work. And the program must have a clear purpose that is agreed upon at the organizational level and by individual participants.
2. Align with Business Goals
Business goals rank right alongside personal development goals when assembling a coaching strategy. In fact, personal development should be tied to business goals wherever possible.
Help the coaching participant understand how their department or company goals align with their personal development goals. Guide them to identify the relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) and how they can measure their impact on them.
3. Set Aside Time for Development
One convenient way to prioritize coaching is to incorporate it into regular career conversations.
Time is a common barrier to establishing a coaching strategy within your company. Many employees are overwhelmed by a large workload and have less than three hours a month to work on their careers. Building time into staff schedules for personal development opens the door for effective coaching programs.
4. Conduct Pre- and Post-Assessments
One of the most effective ways to measure coaching ROI is through pre- and post-coaching assessments, which both coaches and participants complete. Pre-assessments involve gathering insights about an employee’s strengths and needs, how they are perceived and what they need to do to achieve a higher performance level. This feedback can be gathered in a variety of ways, including automated online surveys or one-on-one interviews and helps set the stage for more impactful training that aligns with corporate goals. Those companies who combine coaching with training can increase company productivity by over 80%.
5. Measure Team Impact
When individual workers complete a coaching program, the effect on the team is magnified. One large company surveyed participants who had completed a coaching program to find that 77% credited coaching with improved retention on their team.
Measuring the ROI of coaching is complex since it involves both collective and individual outcomes, which may or may not be compatible. Coaching methods used by Right Management address these challenges with training and evaluation that go beyond executives to impact managers and employees at every level.
6. Added Tip: Don’t Force a Relationship With a Coach
Different coaches have different methods, which may not mesh with all personalities. The relationship won’t benefit your company if your employee struggles to engage with a coach. Make sure the coach you choose will be a good match for the intended employee.
Workplace coaching is designed to guide employees through personal and professional development in a way that enhances their skills at work. To do this, a coach must enter a relationship with an employee who is ready to learn. Preparing your workplace to support this process can ensure success.
How to Choose the Best Workplace Coaching Programme
Start with ensuring quality. In a world where everyone can position themself as a career coach, credentials and training matter.
Right Management employs the world’s best coaches. It is our single greatest differentiator, our superpower. The best coaches prefer to work for Right Management.
Experience and credentials make a difference. There is no entry requirement for coaching credentials – anyone can “be a coach” which means there is potential for a steep learning curve and inconsistent efficacy. All Right Management coaches are ICF and/or equivalent certified, and maintain expertise across industries and job levels-function areas.
Right Management offers three coaching programs to meet all your company’s needs:
Provide executives with a robust and high-touch coaching experience to drive enterprise level performance
Develop leaders with an individualized coaching program that targets goals for transformational change
Provide real-time coaching support based on a leader’s immediate needs
