E-Coaching Tools: 7 Tips for Using New Technology to Develop Tomorrow's Talent
Coaching is a hot topic for many companies. Multiple studies show that traditional coaching can improve business performance, productivity and customer service, but the big question is: Could e-coaching help CEOs and enterprise leaders tap into an even greater connection between profitability and training? The most recent data says, "Yes," especially in the face of the two most difficult challenges enterprise leaders encounter when seeking to maintain and grow profitability through highly skilled and productive workers.
First, there's the challenge of maintaining a highly trained and qualified workforce.
“Knowledge is walking out the door,” says Doug Stephen, Senior Vice President of Learning for CGS. “Most of the time, critical tribal knowledge is lost in the process of layoffs, mass retirements and other resource actions.”
This phenomenon is driven by global shifts in the workplace – 75 million baby boomers on the verge of retirement and millions of freelance workers shifting in and out of employment. With these changing conditions, a significant amount of a company’s unique knowledge base walks out of the company each year.
The second challenge is the pressure that these changes in staffing put on new employees to adapt and learn quickly. In many industries, change comes fast without regard to staffing issues. For example, some companies used to release software updates every 12 or 18 months. Now, however, companies like Facebook release updates as frequently as twice per day.
Companies also must organize and respond to instantaneous customer feedback through digital customer service and social media channels. This rapid intake and turnaround leaves employees without access to information or training vulnerable to high turnover rates.
How can leaders respond to these demands? By implementing new globally focused learning technologies, platforms and programs that support employees, improve productivity and increase profitability.
“Fortune 500 companies that take this route can save up to $31.5 billion a year in losses if they find a way to share this knowledge,” says Stephen. “Enterprises that effectively capitalize on continuous, quick, informal learning—such as coaching and mentoring—are at a competitive advantage.”
Here are seven ways that the new e-coaching trend can help you develop tomorrow’s talent using the resources you have today.
Quickly Align Employees with Your Vision
Employee alignment with company values and vision directly connects to powerful cross-functional collaboration and communication. An e-coaching or remote coaching platform provides an avenue for experienced professionals and experts to deliver micro-learning experiences in the form of short videos, blog posts and question-and-answer sessions. Programs like these, focusing on mentoring and e-coaching through digital technology, give employees access to otherwise difficult-to-reach leaders who can effectively spread the vision of the company and align all positions to that vision.
Capture Informal Learning Opportunities
“Seventy to ninety percent of job knowledge is acquired through informal learning,” says Stephen. That is how the benefits of e-coaching can transform an organization. Capturing informal learning opportunities through short coaching and mentoring sessions allow new experiences to take root.
This also allows employees to create and subscribe to a personalized learning path that in turn helps the business speed the pace of innovation and boost productivity. Connected through digital channels, employees can experience this support and insight in minutes or hours compared to the days or weeks previously required to schedule and complete formal coaching and training.
Build a Scalable Community
McKinsey & Company proposes that improving communication and collaboration can raise productivity by 20 to 25 percent in large organizations. Your company can encourage an intentional community for communication and collaboration by using common communications software. The most successful enterprises and organizations embrace a level of community beyond their organizations’ four walls that mimics universal and easily scalable platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn and Stack Overflow.
Organize and Secure Vital Company Data
Traditional collaboration technologies such as email and paper documents are easy to lose track of, or worse, easy to lose to phishing attacks or subversive employee activity. Modern e-coaching platforms allow your company to both share and protect vital information through secure, single-sign-on access. These protocols organize and protect privileged information from leaving your company with employee turnover.
Use Video, eLearning, Micro-Learning and More
The most-effective training, onboarding and coaching is the result of a variety of educational opportunities. Removing barriers to education based on interest and learning styles also reduces any possible disconnect between your employees and the educational material. With e-coaching, you can provide employees with a wide variety of educational formats, such as video, eLearning, micro-learning, mobile learning and more, so that anyone can step into your coaching environment and be successful.
Drive Teamwork and Collaboration
Within organizations that represent a wide generational range, teamwork and collaboration can be at once very difficult and very necessary. Collaborative e-coaching provides an opportunity for individuals of different demographics, backgrounds and learning styles to engage with the material on their terms. For older employees, this means they can take their time adjusting to the conceptual delay that comes with new technology. For younger employees, they can jump right into learning without sitting through additional and unnecessary training.
Reap the Benefits of Crowdsourcing and Curation
Gartner estimates that by 2017, more than 50 percent of consumer goods manufacturers will source 75 percent of their consumer innovation from crowd-sourced solutions3, especially video content, which comprised 45 percent of all initiatives in 20144. As a business leader, it is easy to see this phenomenon in action with popular websites, including YouTube, Vine and Instagram, featuring original content that is virally shared.
E-coaching platforms make it easy to ask questions, share knowledge and find the answers and the right people to help your employees do their jobs well. With the right platform, your organization can harness this powerfully collaborative medium to source new ideas, curate valuable insights from industry research and publications, and highlight new best practices as they emerge within your company’s “front lines.”
Using secure, video-based coaching and mentoring programs can help employers tap into the tribal knowledge that all too often goes untapped within an organization. Developing technology-based coaching delivers a quick, easy, accessible and scalable opportunity for your company to align employees with the overall vision and build a powerful workforce through custom professional development solutions.
To learn more about using technology to improve your coaching programs, join us for our upcoming webcast, Reshaping Coaching through Crowdsourcing & Collaborative Technology.
References