How to create a great training and coaching culture?

A coaching culture is the set of organizational conventions, values, practices, methodology, and processes available to workers. According to recent studies, 87% of employees are disengaged. Staff are disillusioned by thinking the companies are preparing them for future roles. Reality kicks in when there is an actual skills gap for career advancement. 

Companies are not putting enough energy and resources into creating the training culture and developing talent to promote to higher positions. Most of the training in the companies is still done traditionally e.g. classroom basis, theoretical concepts, etc. This is not a very effective way for employees to retain and succeed with information.   Well, today we want to discuss why creating a coaching culture should be the top of the priority list and how it impacts the top business objectives.  

Importance of building a coaching culture? 

“The use of coaching skills in the workplace is increasingly the norm for managers and leaders who can positively affect their workforce by using skills they have learned from various coaching sessions.” 

~ Magdalena Mook, CEO and executive director of the International Coach Federation. 

Before getting into the detail on how to create a great training and coaching culture, let’s have a quick view of why it is important to have one in the first place.  

The Advantages of a Coaching Culture 

According to the survey, most of the employee’s desire in the workplace is to feel motivated, to gain a deeper understanding of the role, to have a good social connection with their colleagues and to achieve a perfect work-life balance. There are many benefits of having a great coaching culture. 

• Increasing efficiency and productivity through skill development. 
• Increasing employee satisfaction by boosting morale and motivation. 
• Creating a culture of knowledge sharing and inquiry.  
• Enhancing the ability of the employees to adapt to rapid growth and sudden changes. 
• Enhancing employee engagement and well-being. 
• Reducing employment turnover.  

As a result, having a great coaching culture not only meets the employee’s desires but also help in achieving business objectives like improving employee’s productivity, engagement and retention.   Now let’s look at the following ways you can create a vibrant coaching culture at work. 

Offering 24/7 Access to Learning Resources 

It is difficult to meet the interest and availability of everyone at the same as people working from different departments and have different schedules. Therefore instead of making training mandatory or compulsory, the organisation should develop a flexible learning hub on various topics that can be accessed 24/7 and accessed on multiple platforms. 

Making learning resources available at any time, employees will be able to learn at their comfort and learning will no longer be the pressurized task to be completed before the deadline. Learning content should cover a variety of skills and interests. To keep the learning process engaging, content should be available from a 2-hour course to 2-minute videos. Every piece of online content should be mobile-friendly. 

Providing Feedback to the Employees at the Right Time.  

A true learning culture is an environment where employees feel comfortable in asking for feedback and receiving it at any time. Performance evaluation Learning is not about when you give feedback but how people feel about reviews. To provide effective feedback, certain rules that have proved successful in making a great learning culture: 

• To incorporate the feedback into learning, provide feedback timely so that people remember the event.  
• To make people more receptive, start feedback with something positive.  
• Choose and share only ideas that are achievable for employees.  
• Positively provide advice so that it is more likely to heard and followed.  

Receiving feedback should always be an opportunity for employees to spend a couple of hours reflecting more deeply on where they stand now and where they want to go in the future. The motto behind receiving the feedbacks should be “Always Be Developing”. Employers should identify employee’s career goals, guide and help them to get there earlier.  

Aligning Employee Goals with Company Needs 

After defining the employee’s goals, the next step is to align those goals with the company’s needs. Matching an employee’s goals with the company’s needs will identify the unique opportunities for him or her across the company. Aligning these goals and gaps will help the employees to understand how they are making difference the company. Employers should support the employee’s personal and professional growth by defining goals by three things: Knowledge, Behaviours, and Attitude. These should be the guiding principle in evaluating employee’s performance and thinking about the new opportunities for them. 

Focusing on Quality Over Quantity 

An Organisation should teach for the sake of coaching. More coaching, number of sessions or lengthy programs does not mean better coaching nor it affects the outcomes. Short and crisp coaching or session can go a long way if it addressed or concentrate on the particular needs of the employees. Optimize your employee’s survey to create a coaching culture strategy. Prioritize the areas that need to give more focus and set objectives for those areas to be accomplished.  

Making Coaching A Regular Exercise 

It is important to make coaching a regulate and relatable experience. Weave coaching elements into a normal and daily working day so it becomes a part of the culture. This can be achieved by organising weekly or daily feedback sessions, creating a board of free-flowing ideas or having workshops across the departments and teams.  

The main objective is to create coaching techniques that will help your team to learn and grow. We don’t learn things to do something and then stop. This world is changing every second and the moment we stop thinking, listening, learning and changing, we slowly start to left behind. And this is bad for productivity and for us. As the career is becoming more and more fluid, it is important for the organisation to see its employees as partners in learning and development. Today, learning is all about empowering the individual to reach their full potential, which in turn empowers your organisation to do the same.  

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