Are you struggling to retain members of staff? Coaching should be part of your retention strategy. Why does coaching help to keep talent, and how can you implement coaching as part of your strategy?
Why is retaining talent important?
Retaining talent has become more important than ever due to the talent shortage and expensive costs of hiring both in terms of time and monetary costs, and losing employees. Retention is a real problem. According to the Work Institute’s 2022 retention report ‘over 47 million US workers quit their job in 2021. That was 34% more than 2020 and 13% more than 2019’ and the trend continues. They also revealed that ‘pay is an attractor to a new employer, but career is a more significant attractor’. The same can be applied to your current workforce, if career is a significant attractor, then what strategies can you apply to stop employees from leaving?
It is firstly imperative that you understand why employees are leaving your organisation. This can be done through exit interviews and by engaging with your current employees. Secondly, it is important to apply these learnings well.
This article will focus on coaching as a career progression, loyalty increaser and retention tool. However, there are many other ways in which you can increase retention such as offering a better work-life balance, evaluating your rewards, providing more resources and looking at the work culture and environment.
Learning = career progression
Employees are longing for constant progression and challenges throughout their careers, and because learning promotes feelings of empowerment and motivation amongst personnel, they are less likely to leave the organisation when training opportunities are offered.
Coaching is much more than just career progression, it also encourages loyalty in your employees and is an investment in their future as well as your organizations. Coaching can be done on an individual or collective basis – preferably both. Individuals need 1:1 attention, direction and understanding. A coach will enable an employee to recognize how their role fits into the wider vision of the company, what they need to do to remain relevant and builds up their sense of security within an organization. Collective coaching helps build culture, bonds and relationships and create a continuous learning ethos promoting others to share and reveal skills and knowledge about the organization.
Coaching is much more than just learning
Coaching offers employees much more than good skills for use in the workplace, it offers knowledge and insight into individual personalities and provides direction on how they can develop to become, for example, a better manager.
A good coach will help to identify the leadership style that fits most. An effective coach will also help to identify skills that people may not be aware of themselves and apply these to their work. Coaching also help identify gaps in their knowledge that are important for the future.
Remember great workplaces start with great people and to attract and retain the best talent it is not always just about money but also about the investment in your staff for the long term.