Coaching as a Strategy for Managing Personnel
Coaching can be defined as a continuing strategy to managing, developing, and retaining productive personnel. It creates a motivating environment that encourages performance. Coaching assists people in adapting to their work environment and developing relationships with their coworkers. Coaching is a method of offering continual feedback and support to employees throughout the year in terms of performance management. It also provides an opportunity for employees to learn about aspects of their performance in a timely manner so that they can better adopt or change their attitudes for success. In the recent years, professional coaching has led to a significant return on investment for any organization that takes it up. This paper will focus on the importance of coaching and other different aspects of the performance management system of an organization.
Significance of Coaching within an Organization
Many of the organization that do not perform at their peak, in the long run, find it difficult to compete with other companies. It has become increasingly crucial for the management to help their organization to meet challenges like keeping the customer happy, delivering products, and services of high quality, managing continuous change, retaining top talent, empowering breakthrough results, building personal capability that matches performance demands, reinforcing business practices, and working in collaborative networked organizations (Riddle, 2015). Coaching assists organizations achieve critical business goals as it will work with employees to identify and create clarity on the aims of the business and ensure they are met through effective management strategies. It also can boost creativity as a coach will aid the employees to pursue innovative ideas and different solutions confidently. Coaching boosts productivity and effectiveness more especially when employees are taking up new or leadership level roles. Employee retention has become one of the most critical issues for many organizations. The leading companies that have a low turnover and high retention rate usually utilize coaching to ensure that their staffs experience contentment and fulfillment. Coaching also promotes communication within an organization, and this establishes a huge difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one. Effective communication within an organization will enable them to portray their message to their consumers.
Other Aspects of an Effective Performance Management System
Other aspects that an organization can utilize to achieve an effective performance management system include planning, monitoring, reward and recognition, and feedback, review, and appraisal (Bianco-Mathis, 2012). The first step for any organization to have an effective performance management system is through proper planning which begins by analyzing the exact goals that a company is supposed to attain and establish practical methods of achieving them. Carefully monitoring the overall company, departments, and employees is vital for the management of a company's performance and in achieving its goals. Monitoring not only involves the monitoring of the development of each department and employee but also includes giving them with continuous feedback that can be in the form of constructive criticism or praise and reward. Monitoring will also help the management to know the areas that have shortcomings or are lacking and take steps to improve them through training. Rewards and recognition help to improve morale and employee satisfaction, boost productivity, and also aid the organization in moving closer to their goals (Bianco-Mathis, 2012). For an effective performance management system to be complete, there has to be employee rewards and recognitions.
Performance Management Systems of Deloitte, Cargill, and Google
Deloitte current performance management system begins with a regular face to face check-ins that are done between the employees and their managers (Poister, 2016). Instead of filling out tedious review questionnaires once a year Deloitte has a snappy four-question pulse surveys that or on their smartphones and the staff are asked to answer them every quarter (Poister, 2016). The managers, on the other hand, fill in a short app-based performance snapshot composed of eight questions in regards to their team members once a quarter. The responses of both the staff and managers are confidential; the data is aggregated to give a picture on the performance of the teams (Poister, 2016) .
The Minneapolis distributor and food producer Cargill.Inc became a true trendsetter in 2012 after struggling to motivate 155,000 employees. The everyday performance system that it designed incorporated feedback and daily encouragement in to the job conversations. The HR systems, in this case, use the historical management surveys, employee engagement surveys, and interviews with managers, employees, and leaders globally to maintain their performance management. The routine that Cargill does is by creating day-to-day practices and activities that predict the performance of the management quality. The company also developed the employee-manager relationship because they believed they are the heart of effective performance management. Cargill's senior management also ensured that the system is sustained by focusing on the regular recognizing and awarding of the managers because of the good performance in the management practices.
Google's performance management system has always been traditional. Apart from the formal rankings, the company developed the employee goal- setting which has been known as the DNA ever since it started its operations (Poister, 2016). Google's performance system is done by identifying a group of peer reviews for each employee then discusses with them at length. After they get the feedback, the managers hold a meeting to look at the reviews and potential obstacles that have tendencies of overemphasizing the employee's performance. This way the company implements solutions that engage in smart creative which provide the employees with a complete ownership of their own development.
Conclusion
Coaching promotes self-confidence, self-reliance, self-awareness, and learning for individuals. Coaching being a person to person learning has been known to have the highest transfer of knowledge which makes it one of the most efficient methods of development. It is also one of the most known ways of helping organizations over the years to develop and retain talent. Coaching of employees within an organization will result in them developing and growing which will lead to performance improvement which ultimately means that productivity, quality, and customer relations will improve which will result in the organization experiencing significant returns and investments.
References
Bianco-Mathis, V. (2012). Organizational Coaching: Building Relationships and Programs that Drive Results. American Society for Training and Development.
Poister, T. H. (2016). Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
Riddle, D. (2015). The CCL Handbook of Coaching in Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
