How your employees AND your business would benefit from 1-2-1 coaching
Never before has there been so much emphasis on personal well-being. And its importance in the workplace is more vital than ever. If you’re an employer, it’s essential you ensure your staff have the confidence, resilience and motivation to be productive and creative, and that they are able to strike a good balance between their work and home lives.
I have no doubt you and most employers already know this. But are you aware of how to achieve it? Did you know there’s a relatively simple way to empower your workforce? To help them feel more engaged with their role so they feel a personal sense of commitment and responsibility? To ensure they report to work feeling happy and ready to tackle the day? If I may, I’d like to introduce you to the concept of one-to-one workplace life coaching.
Firstly, what is workplace life coaching?
Big brands like Facebook and LinkedIn have been offering free life coaching as part of their staff wellness programmes for some time now. And the trend is starting to filter down into less prominent organisations. My personal hope is that it becomes mainstream, and that employers of companies of all sizes will start to recognise the benefits, both to their people, and to their businesses.
Workplace life coaching isn’t therapy. Neither is it counselling. The aim of a life coach is to help individuals better understand what’s going on in their daily lives, both the positive and the negative. Life coaches help people clarify their personal and career goals, and recognise any challenges or obstacles that might be holding them back from achieving them.
A life coach guides individuals in creating a vision of where they want to be, helping them build habits and equipping them with the practical skills they need to get there. Rather than give advice, life coaches support people in creating their own roadmap to a more rewarding future, and a more balanced life.
How does one-to-one workplace life coaching benefit employers?
Based on the idea that ‘what’s good for your people is good for your organisation’, life coaching has to be beneficial for everyone involved. It can help bring improvement across an array of areas, such as communication, self-confidence, motivation, direction, planning, time management, career progression, leadership and work-life balance.
The 2020 Global Coaching Study by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed the effectiveness of life coaching:
- 80% of clients improved their self-confidence
- 73% of clients improved their relationships
- 72% of clients improved their communication skills
- 67% of clients improved their work-life balance
Of course, there’s the cost to think about when bringing a life coach into your organisation. But I would suggest that you think of one-to-one workplace coaching as more of an investment than an expense, because the benefits far outweigh the costs.
I’ll explain my thinking on this with some of the key benefits of hiring a workplace life coach.
Instils a sense of committment
Too many staff come to work just because they have to. They feel like they’re doing a routine job, with no real vision for their future or how they might develop their role so that they can start to feel a sense of satisfaction and optimism.
This is not at all helpful to any business. Employees with this mindset will contribute very little. But that’s where a life coach can help, by helping workers find that missing sense of commitment, and by bringing them back to the original reasons why they chose to work for you in the first place.
They’ll start to realise that their role is worthwhile and that they are part of a bigger picture. And that if they want to enrich their knowledge, strengthen their skill set and take on more responsibility, they have it in them to find what it takes.
When employees are empowered like this, it boosts their motivation and makes them feel properly invested in what they’re doing, especially if they’ve started taking a proactive approach to working towards their goals. And this can only be a good thing for their employers.
Creates a more productive, engaged and motivated workforce
Workplace life coaching deals with all areas of life, rather than just the career aspect. This is important, because there are often underlying personal issues that would never be shared with colleagues, but that could be affecting performance at work.
One-to-one workplace coaching is just that: one-to-one. It’s totally confidential. Individuals will usually be more inclined to open up to someone outside of their organisation, and the life coach will be able to give them clarity on how their personal concerns may be impacting upon any challenges they’re facing at work.
Sometimes it’s simply a case of needing a confidence boost in order to become more engaged with the job in hand. Maybe an individual needs extra training or mentoring. A life coach can help people recognise and own any shortcomings, so that they feel compelled to do something about them.
Once they ask for support and create a plan in their minds for self-improvement, employees start to feel empowered, so boosting their job satisfaction. This in turn enhances productivity and engagement, both of which are vital to business success.
Reduces sickness absence
When you feel low mentally or physically, you tend to take more time off work than if you feel energised and healthy.
A life coach helps individuals look at their lifestyles and recognise where improvements could be made. This could be anything from diet and exercise to relationships and leisure.
When someone realises the important role that self-care plays in every aspect of life, they will soon buy into forming habits that will result in them feeling happier and healthier. And because a happier and healthier workforce is a more resilient workforce, you’re likely to find that cases of sickness absence will start to drop.
What’s more, a life coach can also help uncover what could be causing anxieties at work or in other areas of life. For example, the likes of what may be considered unobtainable targets, unmanageable workloads or difficult relationships with colleagues are common causes of workplace anxiety. But recognising these issues is a solid start to finding practical ways to tackle them. And with anxiety, stress and depression responsible for 17.9 million days lost due to work-related ill health in 2019-20, it’s clear that heading off such concerns is vital.
Enhances workplace harmony
Positive workplace relationships are essential. Your people need to get on if they’re going to collaborate and communicate effectively.
A life coach will never get involved with office politics. But they can help their clients work on their communication skills in order to improve workplace harmony. This may involve looking at the likes of body language, social skills, empathy and active listening.
Open communication makes for a more congenial working environment, which boosts motivation and increases the likelihood that staff will enjoy coming to work.
So, the million dollar question… will one-to-one workplace life coaching help boost your business performance?
The ICF study mentioned earlier concluded that 86% of companies surveyed reported that they had at least recouped their coaching investment.
What’s more, an LSE Business Review meta-analysis of 339 studies accumulated by Gallup in 2019 and involving over 1.8 million people and 82,000 business units, discovered that greater levels of employee well-being are associated with higher productivity and business performance. In the concluding remarks, it was noted that, although more research is required to make a clear business case, the study “is suggestive of a strong, positive correlation between employee wellbeing, productivity and firm performance.”
Providing one-to-one life coaching for your staff could prove to be a major turning point for your organisation. By enhancing engagement, motivation and communication, and by empowering your people to take charge of their lives both inside and outside the workplace, and giving them a reason to care about their role in your business vision, you could see productivity and growth prosper.
One-to-one life coaching for your business
Would you like to discover how to implement one-to-one life coaching into your workplace? Drop me an email on hello@tinyleapscoaching.com. My name is Jenny Kirrane, and I’m a qualified life coach specialising in positive psychology. I also work as a crisis counsellor for a mental health charity. I’d welcome the chance to talk to you about helping to enhance your employee care offering, so please do get in touch.