Large companies care about improving the competence of their employees. For this, it is necessary to teach them. But how? Hire a business coach or invite a freelance specialist? Both the first and second options have pros and cons. What are they?
To begin with, let’s consider what leaders of the companies wait from their coaches:
- Identification of training needs.
- Development of teaching materials and training programs.
- Implementation of measures for staff development.
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of training programs.
- Conduction of training on the finished programs.
- Adaptation and evaluation of personnel.
- Aftertraining support.
- Reporting.
Basic requirements for the coach
These are basic requirements for the coach. If we state them briefly, we’ll get the following:
The coach should identify training needs, i.e. to detect weaknesses of the employees that affect their performance. He should develop or adopt a training program based on your business needs and identify training needs. Then he should conduct the training itself and evaluate the results. If there is a need, he holds additional sessions after the main training and makes a report.
The second part of the work is the evaluation and adaptation of the staff. At this stage, the coach should work with a narrow specialist, who can assess the professional quality of the staff. Coach-psychologist can evaluate the personal qualities of the person, his motivation, honesty, emotional stability, and other characteristics.
Adaptation, integration, and adoption of a new employee in the existing collective rules and regulations is another work, which is done not only by the coach but also by the supervisor or mentor.
Advantages of the staff coach
The main advantages of the coach who is employed by the company are:
- full-time work
- knowledge of business processes
- knowledge of the company’s structure
- understanding of the problems of the staff
- the possibility of continuous monitoring and testing.
Many executives of major companies believe that they need a regular coach or, preferably, the whole department of them. With frequent recruitment, there really is the need for continuous learning. But is there a need for coaches in small and medium businesses? The definite answer is no. The main thing is the effectiveness of the coach and his training. The company can hire 5 coaches but receive almost zero results, or they can invite one coach periodically and get an increase in sales, number of transactions and profit.
Here are some rules to guide you when planning to hire a coach:
- It’s better to train less, but more efficient.
- An effective freelance coach is better than regular, but not efficient.
- If there is a constant need for training of new employees, it can be useful to hire a regular inexpensive coach.
- If the organization is small, the decision of hiring the coach should be well calculated and financially justified.
- For small companies, it is more profitable to invite the coach when there is a need to conduct the necessary training.