By coaching your team you can improve their performance, build their skills and drive engagement. Skills like communication and strategic thinking are crucial for business success and can boost employee engagement. When individuals are given the time by their leaders to communicate openly and productively, they are more likely to be loyal, engaged and self motivated. Gaining communicative skills through coaching can help managers to develop the skills needed to help other individuals reach success.

Some numbers from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) on the benefits of coaching reveal that a vast majority of companies (86%) say they at least made their investment back. (Source ICF). Coaching generates learning and clarity for forward action with a commitment to measurable outcomes. It builds the self-confidence of employees to face challenges, critical to meeting organisational demands. Coaching also maximises potential and therefore unlocks latent sources of productivity in your team.

So, what is coaching?

Coaching is a process that enables the individual to develop and achieve their full potential. It’s about helping someone evolve and advance in their business, role, or life. Coaches collaborate with individuals and push them beyond their comfort zone through unlocking their barriers and facilitating awareness and accountability.

For more information on how coaching can help you check out our article on this topic.

Why is coaching such a powerful business tool?

Once only reserved for leaders, coaching is now commonly implemented with success among managers and teams alike, and everyone reaps the benefits.

Coaching is a valuable, cost effective and motivating tool a business can utilise in order to achieve success. It helps you, as a leader or manager, to reach your highest potential so that you can drive success among other individuals within your organisation.

Here are some of the benefits of coaching for your team:

Improve individual and team performance

When managers adopt a coaching mindset, they can help their team to improve collaboration, problem solve more effectively and strategise to reach business goals more efficiently.

Reduce turnover and help you to retain high performing staff

Coaching is a vital organisational tool for developing talent and also for reducing staff turnover rates. Improving the staff retention rate within your organisation means that you can dedicate less time to training new staff, and more time to achieving your important business goals. A study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that it can cost the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary in order to recruit and train a replacement. When you consider an employee with a salary of $100,000, this means it would cost over $50,000 to replace them! Coaching gives individuals the opportunity to discuss how they can grow within the organisation and also how they can help their company to grow.

Boost team morale

A team in which individuals feel comfortable to communicate openly is one that can thrive. By employing  a coaching approach you can communicate collaboratively and productively within your team and organisation. Rather than telling your team what to do, you’ll be equipped to be a more intent listener and coach to your team, where you can pull on your strong communicative skills and ask them open ended questions to reach a resolution. For those that may wish to read further on how leaders can work more effectively with their team, there is an excellent book by Nancy Kline called Time to Think – listening to ignite the human mind.

Foster company growth and success

Coaching can help your team to meet important business goals. Fostering an environment in which employees reach their highest potential can make a company’s growth-potential limitless. Through coaching your team, they gain first hand access to skills that can propel them forward and lead to success.

For more information on how to develop a coaching mindset check out our article on the three coaching skills you need to be a great manager.

Directions Unlimited’s Director, David Leahy, graduated from the prestigious Institute of Executive Coaching in Sydney, and has coached executives internationally in South America, USA, Europe, Asia and Australia – helping many individuals and companies attain their goals.

If you would like an obligation free discussion, contact us today and see how your team can leverage the power of coaching for success!

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High staff turnover within a business can result in huge costs. The fact is that there is no line in your profit and loss that captures the cost of lost customers, lost opportunities, and dips in morale so it’s very difficult for businesses to track the real cost.

A study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that it can cost the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary in order to recruit and train a replacement. When you consider an employee with a salary of $100,000, this means it would cost over $50,000 to replace them! When that employee is a high performer, the costs are even greater as a result of lost productivity, lost customers or clients, and other opportunity costs.

Failing to retain high performers also impacts the rest of your team through increased stress within the workplace, dips in employee morale, and drops in productivity that can spread company wide. Even when a new employee has been trained, it can take months, if not years, for them to be as productive and high performing as a long term high performing employee.

So, it makes sense then to do everything you can to keep these top performers in your business. It’s not enough anymore to just assume that people are happy in their job because it puts food on the table. People require much more to be happy and engaged at work, and it’s our job as business owners and leaders to facilitate that.

Retaining your best people

The best way to retain your top performers is by understanding who they are as people, how they fit into their roles and your business as a whole, and what is likely to keep them engaged and happy. Essentially, you need to know what makes them tick.

Would a flexible working arrangement or free lunch bring out the best in them? Would above average pay or an extra week off in the year make your employee work harder? Would promoting from within and offering training and upskilling ensure that your employee remains loyal to your brand?

While all of these ideas are great for keeping employees happy and content, sometimes it can feel a little like throwing it all at the wall and hoping something sticks!

If you knew there was a way to learn everything you need to know about your employees, so that you can help them fit in and stay in your business, wouldn’t that be better? A directed and tailored approach to retaining your staff can help your business soar.

How to know what makes your employees tick

If you’re looking to understand more about your current employees so you can nurture and retain them successfully – a good, objective assessment tool can help you do this, such as the ProfileXT assessment.

ProfileXT gives you a full understanding of an employee’s abilities, personality traits, behaviours, and preferred learning styles. In addition, you also gain insights into the employee’s interests which helps you understand what motivates them and which parts of their role they are most interested in.

Overall, you’re learning whether or not the employee fits within their role and the overall culture of the team – we call this the JobFit. Now, the goal isn’t to pit your team against one another, but rather to understand them completely so that you can ensure they fit into their role, remain fulfilled, and optimise their strengths and skills.

Ensuring you have the right fit within your business is the most important aspect. When a person is the right fit in their role, they enjoy the work they do and as a result productivity and employee engagement increases. This leads to improved retention, better business outcomes and improved profitability.

The next steps

Once you better understand your employees, you can take informed steps to keep them happy and motivated. This will vary between workplaces and employees, so it’s a good idea to have a few branches to your ongoing retention plans.

You’ll get an understanding of what tactics will work best with your employees once you have assessed them using an objective tool. However, there are some common actions which contribute effectively to retention. According to a study by the Australian Human Resources Institute, the most effective ways to retain employees are through offering effective management and leadership, providing opportunities for career progression and promotion, and facilitating a positive workplace culture.

By implementing a strong retention plan within your workplace, you can reap benefits for your business such as significant cost savings, higher productivity and improved quality of work, along with boosts in employee morale and team culture. In short, everybody wins.

To find out how you can retain your top performers and ensure that they are fulfilled within their roles, contact us today.

Of course to retain top performers, you need to source them in the first place! To find out how, check out our posts on how you can source top performing talent for your business and how to avoid a bad hire.

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