As Zig Ziglar, the famous American author, salesman, and motivational speaker, has famously said, ‘You don’t build a business. You build people and people build the business.’
Employees are critical assets that hugely affect the success or the failure of the organization. And their engagement in organizational operations, as well as its cultural perpetuation, is critical. Hiring talent is hard, but retaining talent is harder.
In fact, more than 60% of the companies in a survey said retention was harder than hiring. And employee engagement defines by and large, for how long the employees will stick with the organization.
Today, around 35% of the workforce alone in the US belongs to the millennial generation, and a similar trend is there globally. Millennials in the workplace are notoriously infamous for being job hoppers. While this generalization might be far-fetched, it cannot be denied that millennials have a shorter attention span and crave for change, engagement, and feedback, more than any other generation.
Read more: Does your Employee Engagement Strategy Drive Consistent and Multi-Touch Interactions
And to engage the millennial and Gen Z employees, who are the future of the workforce, is challenging yet imperative. As organizations implement several policies and infrastructural changes to make the ‘workplace’ appealing to the millennials and the Gen-Z, one of the most undervalued employee engagement hacks is coaching.
Importance of coaching
Corporate coaching is often perceived as an ‘add-on’ or an ‘employee-benefit’ and is most commonly restricted to two layers of the workforce – freshers and leaders. But the organizational workforce is highly diverse, and coaching can be immensely helpful in driving engagement across the entire workforce.
Let us have a look at how coaching is integral in designing the employee experience and driving engagement throughout the organization.
The tight connection between employee engagement and coaching: how it helps
Improving the skills of employees
Coaching employees with the skills they want to explore for meeting knowledge gaps or for upgrading their skills can help build a relationship of trust with the organization, along with heightened self-esteem within the employees. With skill-based coaching, employees can feel more confident, can accomplish more, and contribute more to the organizational duties. Coaching also helps employees in carving their own career growth in the organization, and they do not have to depend on the managers to decide the next course of action. When organizations provide regular career development opportunities, employees feel engaged and stick around longer than usual.
Developing leadership
Engaged managers lead to engaged employees, and there’s no denying that. Coaching can step in to help managers develop leadership qualities to create a sense of satisfaction among the team members. With coaching, organizations can build a strong line of leaders who mentor the employees rather than ‘managing’ and ‘controlling’ them. Coached leaders can drive an efficient team-wide goal-setting system coalescing the organizational goals with the employee-specific goals.
Driving a barrier-free team communication
With coaching, managers can learn to develop empathy, which helps in opening up a conscious and transparent feedback system. Around 69% of the employees said they would work harder if they were appreciated better. Coaching can aid in shaping leaders who provide appreciation as well as constructive feedback, delivered appropriately.
Coaching can also help establish a platform for employees to express themselves without the fear of being judged. Offering the employees a chance to voice their opinions can be incremental in organizational growth as well as employee engagement. When employees feel heard and involved, they can share the same vision as the organization and be more engaged and productive.
With coaching designed to improve emotional intelligence, employees can improve verbal, written, and informal forms of communication, not just within the teams but also with the customers and clients, meaning your organization always puts the best foot forward.
Building a work culture
Engagement, motivation, and accountability are primarily an emotional change. Coaching can help organizations in asserting values within the employees and imbibe them organically. With coaching, employees can feel empowered and accountable, and that helps in building a strong work culture.
Read more: Employee Engagement Is a Cultural Change
To summarize…
Coaching is an integral part of individual development and is pivotal in building engagement within employees when approached correctly. Unlike other performance review systems, coaching needs to be integrated within the day-to-day routine of the employees to really make an impact.
Try our 60-day pilot to know more about NumlyEngage™, an AI-Enhanced Coaching Platform. With NumlyEngage™, organizations can
- Improve employee engagement, performance, and productivity
- Identify, attract, and retain top talent
- Grow the next generation of business leaders
