Back to Basics: Teach Managers How To Provide Feedback
Feedback can be valuable for your employees to develop and reach important goals, but more feedback isn’t always better. It’s not as simple as telling
We’re often asked how a solution like SkillCycle can impact the bottom line of an organization. The simple answer is that the people of your company are the single most important asset you have, and the more you invest in them the more your company will grow. But we know this isn’t enough information to bring to your CFO when you’re looking for budget and support on a new initiative. You need to build a credible business case that gets you on the same page and enables you to do what you do best – take care of the people in your organization and help them thrive. We’re happy to take that off your plate and provide you the resources you need to be the innovative people leader you know you are.
Now more than ever, the most innovative companies are turning their focus to developing the skills of their employees. An article from Study International cites an IBM study that states, “120 million workers will need to develop new skills or even be transitioned out of companies to different jobs in the next three years.” The need to upskill and develop employees is being talked about everywhere, but where do you begin to do this? And what are the specific areas that will be impacted?
We’ve compiled research from industry experts as well as success stories from our current clients to bring you 5 areas where coaching can impact your organization.
The situation: According to Custom Insight, Employee Engagement is defined as, “the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.” The benefits of high employee engagement are things like high productivity, innovation, and overall customer satisfaction. Kevin Kruse coined the term “Engagement-Profit Chain,” which goes:
“Engaged employees leads to…higher service, quality, and productivity, which leads to…higher customer satisfaction, which leads to…increased sales (from more repeat business and referrals), which leads to…higher levels of profit, which leads to…higher shareholder returns (i.e., stock price)”
By focusing efforts on employee engagement, companies can reap benefits like 20% higher sales, 21% higher profitability, and higher stock prices. Investing in employee engagement and success is good for business, but companies struggle to identify the best way to go about it.
How coaching helps: There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for employee engagement challenges, and coaching thrives as part of a larger talent development strategy. Dr. Janet Lockhart-Jones describes coaching as a solution in this article published by Training Industry by emphasizing its ability to strengthen manager/employee relationships. When employees have a connection with their manager, they’re more invested in their work and in their impact on the company’s success. Coaching provides one-on-one support, allowing employees to explore their passions, strengths, weaknesses, and overall opportunities to grow. It’s a personalized learning experience where the employee gets to learn from someone who can push them to change behaviors, uncover what’s holding them back, and unlock their potential. When someone has this individualized learning experience, they have a higher chance of retaining and implementing what they’re learning because they have someone cheering for them and holding them accountable for their success.
Why GoCoach: Working with an external coach provides an objective lens where employees are in a safe space to ask questions, fail, and try again. The key to a successful coaching experience is finding the right coach for you based on what you want to learn, and based on personality alignment. This is where GoCoach comes in. We’ve built a platform that allows a coachee to customize their experience and find the coach that best meets their needs. The platform provides coach options based on specific qualifications from the coachee, and the coachee uses the platform to schedule “fit” interviews with up to 3 coaches. We provide learning materials so the coachee knows what types of questions to ask and what to look for, and our support team is here to help in the process to calibrate feedback from these interviews and help the coachee make the best decision for them. Our clients see the highest rate of coachee engagement, retention, and overall goal attainment when working with our coaches.
The situation: In a crowded market, companies are struggling to stand out. With the rise of social media and technology, buyers are making decisions differently than they were before, and a sales force needs to be able to keep up with the way buyers are doing this. What worked in the past won’t always work today, and the pressure to be one step ahead of the competition is real. Growth is important for the company’s bottom line, and to ensure a company at minimum maintains its level of success. Customer retention can take a dip with one bad interaction, and it’s more important now than ever that companies think of their customer first when making big decisions. 70% of the buying journey now happens before a prospect speaks with a sales rep, and it’s crucial that your reps handle that prospect successfully to close the deal. It’s also crucial that your sales and marketing teams are aligned so quality leads are generated and ultimately closed.
How coaching helps: As mentioned earlier, coaching provides a safe and objective place for coachees to learn, grow, and implement behavior change. People don’t know what they don’t know, and one-on-one coaching meets them where they are and doesn’t assume prior knowledge of any kind. It allows the coachee to truly learn the foundational skills they’re missing while identifying the specific habits they have (or don’t have) that are holding them back. Sales is a lot of pressure, and it’s hard to learn when you’re in a stressful place from someone who controls your position in the company (your manager). Working with a coach provides that safe space and pulls you away from the pressure which ultimately leads to true learning. Also as mentioned earlier, coaching is known for improving relationships and communication, which is crucial when sales and marketing teams need to be aligned to drive the business forward.
Why GoCoach: We’ve curated our marketplace of coaches to provide subject matter expert coaches in many areas. This means our platform allows coachees to learn from someone who has been in their shoes before. This is why we’re able to provide coaching for both hard and soft skills, leading to more measurable growth and success for our clients. Companies of varying industries have hired us to work with key sales and BD leaders to improve sales performance and ultimately customer retention. Sales is the backbone of an organization, and it’s critical to give this team as many resources as possible to ensure their success – because their success is your success. Companies who use GoCoach to coach their sales people see a measurable improvement in sales performance (meetings scheduled, deal size, time to close, deals closed,etc.) within the first 3 months of the engagement.
The situation: This article from Inc. outlines the war for talent and the skills shortage in a comprehensive way. In summary, companies are struggling to attract and retain the best talent, and they’re lacking specific skills within the company that open roles are meant to fill. Recruiters are filling the same roles multiple times, and employee tenure is on a national decline. HR allocates a large portion of its budget to Talent Acquisition and Recruiting, but employees are still leaving due to the lack of development opportunities within the company. The most cost-effective solution to this problem is to invest in your current talent pool and upskill your employees. The money you spend investing in your employees has a 10x return, and it’s objectively better business to spend budget on programs that develop existing employees rather than programs to hire new employees. Even with significant investment spent developing employees, companies will still have roles to be filled with external talent. In a competitive talent market, companies that invest in employees attract more quality talent, retain the talent they have, and have a pool of skilled promotable talent built from within.
How Coaching Helps: Coaching is a development tool that meets people where they are, helps them set goals, and builds them the path to attain those goals by developing specific skills. When companies offer coaching, they see a higher rate of behavior change and skill attainment than with traditional training. Coaches help their coachees apply learnings into their day to day role, which makes the knowledge relevant and therefore memorable and applicable for the coachee. Coaches also provide an objective lens for the coachee to learn in a safe environment, and when partnered with the right provider, can elevate a company’s talent pool and overall skillset significantly. This means companies can teach the talent they have today how to become the talent needed for tomorrow – and then give them the resources to get themselves there.
Why GoCoach: We partner with you and your team to oversee key details of any engagement and understand how to use this data to help your employees grow and develop the necessary skills for the company to be successful. We come from HR backgrounds, and understand how company culture and internal dynamics can impact any initiative. Our coaches are trained by us to deliver a consistent experience across your coachee pool, and they will have access to key details you share about your company that provide all the context they need to make the impact you’re looking for. We work with you to incorporate 360 feedback where necessary, and leverage any internal data you’ve collected about your employee population that provides the right context and feedback for the coaches to keep in perspective and guide their coachees. We provide a holistic solution to your talent shortage and skills gap, and we support you and your team to continuously prove ROI. You’ll have visibility into how your internal talent network is growing their skills, which you can use in resource planning, compensation planning, performance management, and more.
The situation: The term “Tribal Knowledge” refers to information that’s known by certain members of a team but isn’t captured in company documentation and standards. When an employee leaves a company where the right mechanisms aren’t in place to capture this knowledge, the company loses levels of productivity without that person in their role. This can be something as simple as the labeling of a file, or as complex as the code at the core of a software product. Tribal knowledge also includes relationships that are critical to getting a project completed, and when this information is mismanaged or not captured, it puts a dent on the productivity of that team significantly while they adjust to the vacancy and ultimately have to hire and ramp a new employee in that role.
How coaching helps: As mentioned previously, coaching is a critical part of driving behavior change. When a coach holds their coachee accountable for changing specific behaviors, the coachee is more likely to adopt good habits and implement best practices. This is all critical to mitigating the challenges that tribal knowledge brings because through coaching, employees have a better understanding of how to manage and document their work, and why this is important to do on a continuous basis. Companies that implement a coaching program successfully also see higher employee retention, meaning they lose less employees and therefore lose less productivity.
Why GoCoach: GoCoach acts as a partner to your organization and oversees the entire coaching engagement. We partner with you to understand your Talent goals, including employee retention and behavior change while upskilling. We work diligently with our coach community to ensure there’s alignment in the delivery of our solution. We provide insight into goals that are set, progress to those goals, and other engagement analytics that show the coachee investment and engagement as they progress. As a result, you will have a comprehensive pulse on your employee base and how they’re addressing the challenges outlined at the beginning of our engagement.
The situation: Since the 2008 recession, there have been cuts to corporate programs dedicated to training and developing employees. Companies have been trying to do more with less, and have embraced a sink or swim mentality. This has led to a generation of workers who are underprepared for the roles ahead of them that are critical in maintaining the success of your business: the management level. Companies are also faced with people being promoted from within and not knowing how to transition into their new job descriptions and their new expectations. This leads to lower performance from their teams, lack of trust, and higher turnover as the manager ramps. This is seen in industries varying from technology to retail to transportation, entertainment, and beyond. This is the skills gap.
How coaching helps: Through working with a coach, employees are able to unlearn bad habits and learn the habits they need in order to thrive in their new role. They’re working with an objective teacher where they can be vulnerable and be open about their challenges in a safe and supportive environment. They aren’t expected to know any more than they already do, and their coach can provide feedback on what they need to do to get themselves and their team where they want to be.
Why GoCoach: Our coaches come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and are uniquely positioned to help individuals navigate any career situation they find themselves in. We take a programmatic approach to employee development and unify the experience for your employees while retaining the personalized learning component that makes coaching successful. We have a community of coaches that teach both hard and soft skills, and who come to the table with industry knowledge. We build confidence in our coachees through our certification programs and badging, which is rewarded as certain benchmarks are met. We ensure not only that coachees are learning, but that they know the power of what they’re learning and why it matters to their company and their career.
To recap: Coaching can impact many key areas of your organization. The top 5 benefits that our clients have seen are an increase in employee engagement, improvement in sales and customer retention, lower recruitment spend, mitigation of tribal knowledge, and ensuring the future success of the business. These are important metrics for a business no matter the size or industry, and these are common areas where businesses need to focus their attention in order to get ahead. We’ve learned that most of our customers face the same problem, and the leaders in the space are the ones who find and implement the right solution.
As you explore solutions, consider a partnership with GoCoach. We make it easy to access coaching that will improve on these key metrics, and we will set your employees and your company up for long term success. We’re in the business of making companies better, so a win for you is the only win we care about.
