Enabling Coaching Culture at the Workplace
Most organizations often think of coaching as a development tool. In fact, it’s much more than that. It is a mindset. In this article, we’ll look at the coaching culture, with particular reference to onsite i.e. workplace. We’ll touch on what HR traditionally has been doing in terms of coaching. We’ll also look at the return on investment (ROI) of coaching and how technology can support HR in building a successful coaching culture.
Workplace Coaching can be a great way to support our employees’ growth, engagement, and performance. We’ll also discuss some of the best practices for HR professionals to support this initiative in their respective organizations.
Workplace Coaching
Workplace coaching is an umbrella term for activities that enable employees to grow professionally and personally. Think of one-on-one coaching, peer coaching, digital / virtual coaching, or a combination or mix of all these. In some ways, workplace coaching is a form of on-the-job learning. It’s a collaborative process that occurs through everyday interactions between a manager and an employee as well as between peers.
HR’s Role in Workplace Coaching
When it comes to Workplace Coaching, many organizations have so far (only) focused on providing their top management or the people that they choose for coaching. But with the new HR education and trends, coaching, in many organisations, has now been scaled down to the high performing or high potential employees or future successors. Where, in the past, HR mainly had to ensure that coaching was available for the organization’s top leadership team, they now need to take a more company-wide approach to coaching. In the sections below, we’ll first look at the importance (and benefits) of coaching in the workplace and then delve into how HR can ensure the success of a company-wide approach to coaching.
Benefits of Workplace Coaching
Workplace Coaching isn’t or shouldn’t be a standalone activity. For it to be truly effective, companies need to foster a coaching culture (more on that in the section below). The benefits of such a culture and the coaching activities that go with it are:
- Stronger employee relationships;
- Higher Employee Engagements;
- Better performance;
- Higher retention.
Workplace Coaching Enablers
1. Set Goals
As with all new initiatives, the first thing to do when the organisations want to start — or scale — its coaching efforts is to set goals they want to achieve. Needless to say, that these goals must be aligned with those of the business.
An example goal might be that our organisations want their employee engagement and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to increase by x points and want to use coaching to achieve this.
2. Foster a Coaching Culture
As mentioned earlier, many companies, tend to coach only the top team. Therefore, the first thing to do when an organisation starts scaling down its coaching efforts to build a coaching culture.
A coaching culture is characterized by the following elements:
- People trust each other;
- They have the ability to challenge the status-quo regardless of their position in the organisation;
- Individuals have a growth mindset;
- Managers have the willingness to grow their team members, and;
- Peers also want to grow peers and people who are even junior to them.
Building a coaching culture is the starting point and the key to success Unsurprisingly, this isn’t something that happens overnight. It may take several years to develop a company culture, depending on the organisational size, commitment and willingness.
3. Identify & Develop ‘NEW’ Competencies
Managers play a key role in workplace coaching. While I strongly urge that managers should also be coached for the, to grow, here the organisational leadership needs to be a bit more realistic. Coaching isn’t for everyone and being a good coach is not easy, especially if we haven’t experienced what it is like to be coached.
That doesn’t mean that managers shouldn’t have certain skills and behaviors that empower a so-called coaching mindset. Think, for instance, of having a growth mindset, emotional intelligence and strong communications skills. These are characteristics that HR should look for in management candidates — and where necessary — develop in the organisation’s existing management team.
4. Start Small and Run a Pilot
Before we roll out an organisation-wide employee coaching program, let’s start small and run a pilot. Have a few managers with some coaching experience — or at least a coaching mindset — introduce the coaching initiative to their teams. Note what people’s reactions are, what questions they have, and what concerns have been raised. Test the digital or virtual coaching platform that may be commissioned.
Here too, note how employees are responding to this. Do they find the platform easy to use? Are the exercises valuable to them? Do they have time in their busy work week to spend on coaching? The insights we’ll gather from running this trial are extremely valuable. They’ll help us prepare for employees’ reactions, solve practical issues such as a lack of time to spend on coaching, and tackle other bottlenecks that might pop up. All of this will make the eventual company-wide roll-out go a lot smoother.
5. Communicate
Gone are the days when HR teams used to hide behind their role as paper pushers only. Communication is now an important part of HR’s role in enabling Workplace Coaching. This includes communication at every level within the organization on how to develop a coaching mindset, and what coaching tools and opportunities are available to their employees.
HR must also communicate with the rest of the organization so that they are also informed about the coaching activities available within the company. As a People Team, let’s take a look at our employee lifecycle and identify in which stages of the cycle we can communicate the company’s coaching program, for example, during new hires onboarding. Our workplace coaching can also be something to highlight in our employer branding.
Key Takeaways
To conclude, coaching is the act of providing feedback — usually to executives, senior managers, and managers — about how to reach their personal best in their organizational leadership role. In their capacity as a coach, the HR professional will do everything from active listening through providing test results that highlight a manager’s strengths and weaknesses.
in order for the HR teams to succeed as effective and efficient coaches or the support system to Workplace Coaching, they need to learn this first and understand the dynamics of the coaching itself.
About the Author
Muhammad Sajwani is a C-Level HR, Transformation Leader, Board Advisor, Business Coach & Organisational Consultant working in the capacity of Managing Director, Evolve HR. He is an author, columnist and a contributor who besides writing for other platforms also regularly writes at BizCatalyst 360. He brings along 30+ years of local & international experience. He is a change catalyst specializing in unleashing the human Dreamgenius through Leadership, Creativity and Change Management. Muhammad has been instrumental in helping organizations come to terms with organizational changes like right-sizing and business process re-engineering. His innovative approach & high personal competence encourages people to not only accept change, but also to excel in it. Muhammad has diverse experience in conducting strategic & management development programs, conferences & events for organizations across sectors.
