Are you a company with a great team, but want to deepen their professional development? Yes, the mentorship, the buddy or sherpa system for when a new employee joins the team is good. But let’s take this a step further and really invest in the ongoing long-term professional development of your staff.
A Harvard Business review described a study conducted over 14 years by a large high-tech company on a coaching and mentorship program. The company experienced significant retention and productivity of both the leaders and support staff receiving coaching. companies that coach their employees experience significant increases.
More specifically, retention rates and salaries increased by 20+ points, and participants were 5x more likely to be promoted.
While these statistics may be enticing, the question always remains, what if my employees leave once they receive coaching? Well, a good friend of mine, Ross, shared with me the other day that this is one of the most important aspects of staff development that companies miss. If your staff are seeking other opportunities, you are already too late. It is vital to start with asking the question, what are you most interested in doing? Because you want to help people thrive and deepen or enrich their current role, not just focus on whether or not this person is promotional material.
Everyone, especially from different cultures, have varying ways of viewing success in their workplace. Depending on the power distance between an employee and their leader, or if someone believes they can actually have honest dialogue with their leader, you may never truly know unless you have a trusted third-party coach to bridge that communication gap. In all honesty, some people do desire to see what the next opportunity is, while others desire to expand upon an existing job function.
In HR, we make a distinction between job enrichment and job enlargement.
Enlarging a role involves broadening the scope of a job by creating more variety in the number of different tasks to be performed. This reduces boredom for a position that has very redundant tasks. Enriching a job involves increasing the depth of the role. You may consider adding responsibility for planning, organizing and controlling tasks in a role but this gives an employee more decision-making power and authority in their current role.
Are a busy HR department or operations team and you don’t have time to redesign the entire organizational chart? I would suggest the power of coaching!
If you have the budget to invest in more total rewards which includes bonuses, pay raises and benefits, it also includes an allotted budget for an employee to pursue professional training. If you allow that employee to sit with a professional coach who can help them analyze the skills needed in their current roe and the skills needed for advancement in that role, or enrichment in that role – there are professionals who can help!
At Always Employed, I take clients through a three-step process. We go over your current job descriptions, performance review feedback and industry standard skill assessment tools. This skill discovery process is the first step in helping an employee grow deeper, wider or higher in their role in your company.
If you need more information, click below for a free guide and initial consultation.
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