03. Employee Retention and Engagement: How Coaching Benefits Managers – I

In the previous lesson we saw how the British Professional Cycling team’s coach – Sir David Brailsford – transformed a team that had hardly won any medals in it’s 76-year long run, to become the number one cycling team in the world.

In the last few decades, numerous research studies have revealed that coaching can be immensely beneficial to managers, employees and the organisation alike.

Take, for example, a research conducted by multinational technology company Google which found that the common factor among all great managers at Google is the effort they put into coaching team members.

Meaning, managers who adapt a coaching mindset are likely to experience enormous benefits from it.

In this lesson, we explore the benefits of coaching for managers

Let us start by looking at benefit…

1. Employee Retention and Engagement

 ‘[All other things being equal] People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.’

A Gallup survey reveals that the No. 1 reason employees leave their companies is directly related to their leader-manager. In addition, 71% of employees are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive.

Now, what happens to an organisation saddled with disengaged employees? It suffers from:

1. Reduced productivity, reduced customer satisfaction, and as a result – reduced profitability.
2. Low employee morale and motivation, poor performance and eventual employee exits.

 And what happens when an employee exits the organisation? Employee exits usually translate to a great deal of time, money and effort spent on hiring, onboarding and training a replacement. Not to mention the loss of productivity during the transition phase. Besides, if you’re unable to find a replacement, other team members could be overburdened with additional responsibilities, possibly leading to reduced quality of work and employee morale.

What’s the proactive solution, you ask? It’s Coaching.

 A study by research and consulting firm Bersin and Associates found that coaching plays a key role in employee retention.

Manager-subordinate relationships are one of the most significant relationships in the organisation, which – if gone sour – could lead to hostility, conflicts, and disagreements, eventually impacting smooth team functioning.

 Workplace coaching is one strategy that can greatly strengthen manager-employee relationships, which in itself is a big step toward improving employee engagement.

Meaning, managers that spend significant time coaching employees are likelier to have an engaged, dedicated and committed team – that eventually helps them streamline processes, managerial tasks and eases the load off their shoulders – allowing them to focus more on strategic rather than operational responsibilities.

 In Conclusion:

Employee Retention is the first of the three benefits of adopting a coaching mindset.

We will be covering two more benefits in the next lesson.

For now, please take the accompanying quiz.

Happy Quizzing!