The success of any business relies upon the team within it and the people leading them. When we provide opportunities for development, we are giving those people the ability to carry out their roles as best they can. It is important to know how to use employee coaching because, without it, your team may not be fulfilling their potential.
Consistent training, mentoring and learning opportunities help with onboarding and retention amongst other things. It provides the necessary resources for performance improvement, adaptability and knowledge transfer that will make people want to make a bigger impact on the business whether they’re just starting out or looking for progression.
Similarly, onboarding can be a challenge for many and so providing these resources from the start gives them direction. Working towards certain goals can be daunting without the proper support – leading to poor quality of work and lack of accountability. This is why we encourage employers to instigate new learning methods and implement training in the company culture.
Types Of Employee Coaching
People learn in different ways and will usually benefit more from one approach than others. While it is important to consider group development, it is always worth communicating with individual staff and talking about what kind of training they would like. As well as this, find out how they learn. Whether they prefer to watch someone by shadowing, jump straight in and do it themselves or have clear cut instructions written for them – it is important to provide options.
Virtual Training
Nowadays, this is probably the most common approach you’ll see. Especially as we have noticed a spike in remote work recently – it seems like the obvious option. But even before the rise of home offices, many corporations were using virtual meetings and online courses as a way to implement skills training.
But if you want to know how to use employee coaching to boost productivity – virtual training can give some great insight into this. It is a great option for businesses that span across different countries and time zones. As a result, it plays a huge part in spreading the message about using your time wisely. When you can access resources at convenient times, your team is far more likely to take on board what’s being shared.
Additionally, it allows you to discuss the teachings and work together as a company to decide how you can use the training to overcome business challenges and reach goals. Productivity comes with enthusiasm, so including your remote workers and distant staff means that everyone is staying in the loop – ready to work collaboratively. Although, much like our time with Lloyds, we understand that company downtime needs to be minimal and so virtual training can give effective, quick knowledge that sticks.
Group Training
A big part of what we do here at Azimuth is working with groups of people who share the same visions and goals and helping them develop their skills so that they can reach them. Even the most talented people can struggle when it comes to teamwork and collaboration. Incorporating this into the training itself can help bring individuals out of their shells and learn how to work as part of their own team.
This goes hand in hand with productivity in the sense that you need to be able to share ideas, understand one another and assist to be able to reach an outcome efficiently. Also, when you have the support and recognition of others, it makes you want to continue that impact and do all you can for them in return.
With this in mind, the dynamic of group training tends to be more fluid. This allows you to mould it to your business and get out of it what you need. It also plays off of your normal working environment. Meaning you don’t need to change processes, but instead can make small adaptations to better what you already have in place. This simply plays off of your team’s strengths and can be far more cost and time effective.
Ongoing & Refreshers
For many businesses and individual roles, there are skills or tasks that we need to be reminded of consistently. This helps retain top performers and keep the quality of work as high as possible. Without ongoing support, complacency can have a huge impact on the reputation of your business. Things like refresher courses are popular and often required for industries that hire first-aiders or need safeguarding support such as schools.
However, your team could benefit from this same support across many skill sets and job roles. You can offer this by making company-wide training days compulsory and ensuring each person is receiving the ongoing support they need from managers and leaders.
Our work with Everton FC brought to light this need for constant training. Whether new staff need to be brought up to scratch or promotions have meant people need to develop different skills – it should always be available to them. How to use employee coaching is up to you – but an advantage of it is the ability to evaluate your team and find areas for improvement. This continual development will see productivity improve, not slip.
Advice For The Leadership Team
When it comes to training and mentoring, you must be aware of the levels at which your team is working. A company is usually based around entry-level roles, right up to managers and CEOs. Because of this, there are a few things you need to consider that may impact the ways in which you implement your programmes or when carrying out the training yourself.
Ask Guiding Questions
Open-ended questions along the way provoke more thoughtful and considered answers. This encourages the individual to think about what they are doing and consider multiple possibilities. This will lead to far more productive and engaging conversations as well as push those with less experience to use their knowledge and attempt some self-led problem-solving.
As a manager, you should be aware of how willing and able your team members are to improve and develop within their roles. Having these kinds of conversations will help you gauge how proactive they are within the business and possibly how much progression they are looking for.
Recognise and Reward
When you’re learning something new, it can take a while for it to click. But when it does – it can be enlightening. This morale booster should always be paired with recognition from whoever is mentoring. That way, they will want to remember and apply what they have learnt to their own roles and responsibilities.
However, be specific when dishing out compliments. This way the individual knows you mean it and will trust that you have been paying attention to them. This can boost productivity as they will continue hitting these small milestones, understanding that it’s making a positive impact.
Approach From their Perspective
While all parties are benefitting from this training, they are the ones learning. So it is vital that the development is being led from their perspective, rather than your own. This reflects the comment I made earlier about asking people how they learn. Some will prefer to approach things in different ways, so going about it like this will make the whole experience more productive.
Everyone has different motivations. Finding out what these are will help you align the way they work most effectively with the goals and targets you are both looking to reach. This also helps with talent retention as they will feel more satisfied in a role that reflects their strengths. You will notice happier, more productive departments.
How To Use Employee Coaching With Azimuth
It is clear that investing in training and development will see benefits across the business. Not only for you but for your staff. Giving them the opportunity to shine and improve upon areas they recognise will give you the best chance of achieving high productivity.
Don’t forget that satisfied and happy staff are the ones that will want to make an impact and make the effort to work hard – achieving your goals. So you may think that training benefits you by improving upon skills and technicalities, but it also allows them to approach progression opportunities and become more aligned with the company.
Recognising which areas you need to improve upon is a start, but we can help with implementing new schemes and figuring out how your team learns best. If this is something you want for your business, speak to one of our dedicated Azimuth experts today by contacting us at enquiries@azimuth.eu.com or call 01483 24 33 81.
We will be more than happy to discuss how we can help you and with over 20 years of experience across a range of industries, we have the innovative, proven tools that can help you unlock the true potential of yourself – and your business. What are you waiting for?
Work with the experts you can trust. Azimuth, a new direction in learning.
