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14.12.2021 Company culture

What is work coaching and why should you implement it?

What is work coaching and why should you implement it?

Workplace coaching is not a common perk for businesses to offer their teams. Yet, the benefits of coaching are unarguably strong for both employers and employees. So, is it time we saw a boost in companies offering work coaching? We discuss this, and more, below.

What is workplace coaching?

To fully discuss coaching, it’s important we are clear on its meaning. Workplace coaching, or work coaching, is the act of having a professional career or life coach come into your workplace and provide advice, plans and motivation to your employees. A workplace coach is usually hired independently from your team and will come in for a set number of hours weekly or monthly. Although, in bigger businesses, a full-time coach could potentially be brought on board.

Depending on your team’s needs, the coach can help with setting short-term goals, working to bigger or more ambitious goals, helping an employee reach personal career goals or simply motivating a team to reach new heights.

How does workplace coaching work?

Depending on the type of coaching you have invested in, coaching can work in a variety of ways.

Coaching towards a predefined goal

If you’ve hired a short-term workplace coach to help with a goal your team needs to meet, this will usually be defined in an introduction session with the coach. This will mean you can hit the ground running in the first coaching session and tackle the issue at hand straight away.

The coach can work with your team as a group to help motivate them, define a clear workflow and set smaller targets to help build up to the main goal. If needed, they can also work together one on one with individual team members to help them achieve their part in the project.

Individual career coaching

If an employee is lined up for a big promotion, is set to start managing a team, is moving to a new department or will be taking the lead on a large project, this could be the case for coaching.

Often, when one of these scenarios takes place an employee can feel expected to jump right in, even if they’re unprepared. In some situations, things might work out, but more likely the team member will risk overworking or burnout in order to play catch-up or prove themselves. Or, they may suffer from a case of ‘imposter syndrome’ and struggle to meet their true potential.

Workplace coaching is an incredible tool to utilise in these situations. Specified management coaching, for example, can help teach your employee how to best manage a team and prepare them for the new responsibilities found in a management position. This, in turn, benefits not just that one employee but their department as well!

Life coaching 

While life coaching isn’t a specific type of business coaching, it is something that businesses can provide to their employees.

This type of coaching helps individuals to set goals and then work towards them, rather than assisting them with a preset goal. Whether this is a goal specified to their role or career, or more of a personal goal is up to the employee. This type of coaching will usually start with one or two informal conversations, allowing the coach to discover more about their client’s personality and help them to define a goal, before providing tips on how to do this and defining a clear path for them.

What are the benefits of work coaching?

So, the benefits of these coaching types are clear for employees. Reaching their goals, developing into new roles and working on their personal achievements are all bound to be incredibly fulfilling. But how does this benefit a business?

Shows investment in your team

Offering coaching in the workplace is a sure-fire way to let your team know that you are invested in them, both personally and professionally. Showing such a keen interest in their development and helping them reach career and personal goals helps deepen the relationship with your team and will have an excellent impact on their respect, engagement and enjoyment of the workplace.

Increased employee retention

A company that is clearly invested in its employees is sure to keep them around for longer than one that treats a team as dispensable and replaceable. Plus, with work coaching tailored to helping an employee grow in their career, it will be clear to your team that you are interested in helping them climb the career ladder and explore new opportunities within your team.

Keeps motivation and productivity levels high

Employees who feel stagnated or forgotten about are bound to have their motivation dampened. Offering workplace coaching directly combats this by giving them someone to talk to who is an expert in finding new ways for your team to push themselves and achieve things. Whether they find that there are new skills they want to sharpen, or there are projects they want to take on, this is great for both their development and your business growth.

Helps prioritise goals and workflow

When business coaching is offered for larger projects, the benefits become blindingly clear. Rather than approaching the goal from multiple different angles and becoming overwhelmed by the to-do list, coaching offers an expert outside set of eyes to help organise your team.

This will see a big task broken down into bite-sized pieces, with a clear set of priorities and regular check-ins to ensure everybody is on track. Checking smaller tasks off of the list will mean the workflow is clear and easy to follow.

Keeps everyone on the same page

This is a benefit of coaching a group. When times get busy in your business, communication can begin to struggle and your team may not know what other stakeholders are working on. Having a coach on board to help you reach your goals means that regular check-in sessions will always be on the cards. This helps with communication throughout the process, but will also be a great step in fostering check-ins as a habit in the future, too!

Increased positive workplace culture

Getting your employees talking about their goals and motivations with a coach is a great step forward in improving your workplace culture as a whole. Whether your team members are taking part in one-on-one coaching sessions, or are attending workplace coaching as a group, talking about their goals and achievements will give them the confidence to start doing this outside of coaching too!

This will then work towards a workplace culture that promotes open communication, positive ambition and discussion between teams on how they can help each other meet their goals.

Great benefit for future employees

Treating your talent right will not only help your current employees but it is a great talent attraction method for future hires too. Being able to boast about offering workplace coaching is a great way to show your future candidates how you value your team and work to improve their future. This, along with other attractive benefits, will be an important factor in setting you apart from the competition.

Workplace coaching as part of a well-rounded benefit package

Of course, workplace coaching isn’t the only thing you should be offering your team.

Adding this as an additional feature to a training budget, for example, will give your team the confidence and technical skills needed to succeed within your business. Or, offering team coaching alongside regular social events will help perfect communication within your business. Ultimately, it is up to you and your team to decide on the benefits that will give the most value to your business.

If you’re interested in improving your current benefits package, check out our Knowledge Hub article on finding the benefits your employees actually want.

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