For many reasons, staff training alone is fraught with tremendous financial wastage and unfortunately there are many reasons why it can’t deliver the results many hope for.

In any training program, students lose 75% – 80% of what they are taught as soon as the training session is over, and they fail to retain much of the remainder unless they are able to immediately put it into practice.

Your employees will further struggle to implement what they have learnt in a training course because existing systems and procedures usually don’t allow for much in the way of change.

Plus, if the person who did the training isn’t influential enough, they won’t be in a position to be taken seriously and therefore be able to push the changes through.

One of the key advantages of coaching

One of the advantages of coaching is that coaching is personally tailored to the individual, their goals and their business situation. Coaching is also ongoing, and so allows the person being coached to make incremental improvements one step at a time.

If he or she comes up against a challenge, their coach can help them analyse the best way to overcome the hurdle, or if to overcome it at all is the best way forward.

Unlike traditional training courses; an investment in coaching usually brings a noticeable change with much faster results. However, it isn’t possible to replace training with coaching, you will need both for maximum results.

If you are considering engaging an executive coach, you should first consider this very carefully; particularly where Generation Y are concerned.

What I am about to write is true of all clients, but is most important where Generation Y is to be coached.

Tailored staff coaching

As I said in a previous article, ‘Recruiting and retaining high value Generation Y staff’, Generation Y will be most productive if they work with mentors. The next step up from in-house mentors is a personal coach.

However, a business should not offer to engage a coach for a staff member unless the staff member is making a financial or personal contribution to the process. Clients who have coaching paid for do not make the best gains. This is particularly important for Generation Y because they are used to having everything handed to them on a platter. Anyone who is personally contributing toward their own coaching process, will value it more highly and the coaching will have a much better chance of succeeding for them and their employer.

In 2008, one of our clients offered to have two of their staff coached by us. Both staff appeared keen on the idea until they discovered that I had recommended that they fund half of the cost themselves. They thought that it was their employer’s responsibility but I said I wouldn’t take them on as clients unless they funded half. Working with their employer, we developed a payment scheme so that it wouldn’t affect their household cash flow. They both refused.

A question I put to their employer;

“If the staff member isn’t prepared to contribute to their own future, why should you?”

We don’t want to work with people who aren’t prepared to succeed. It wastes your time and money and it wastes our time – time that we could otherwise be spending with clients who do want to put more on their bottom line.

Also see ‘How to get the best out of your Gen Y workers’

I could have titled this ‘how to get the best from your workers’, because it applies to all employees, but is especially important if you want to get the best from your Generation Y staff.

Talent development is often overlooked and yet it is one of the best ways to increase your bottom line. If you create a structure that enables talent development, all staff will benefit and your Gen Y staff in particular, will return your investment many times over.

Remember that Generation Y wants and needs to be nurtured. By having a structure that encourages networking and nurturing, your Gen Y will excel.

Three key strategies to improve Gen Y performance:

1. Establish up a mentoring program. We recommend that Gen Ys (and new recruits) should have two mentors. One, an old hand who knows day-to-day work required, and the other, a senior manager with operational responsibility. This will help Gen Y (or the new recruit) feel included because they will have a personal contact with someone in senior management through whom they can potentially directly influence the operation of the business and through whom they can get information ‘from the top’.
2. Establish networking situations that enable Gen Y to easily network with you and your managers. They need to be included and have an opportunity to contribute at all levels.
3. Set up a structure that encourages creative input. All businesses should be looking at ways of continually innovating and Gen Ys fresh approach can not only help generate profitable new ideas, but also help Gen Y satisfy their need to feel needed.

You can go a step further to cement the bond with your Gen Y staff by providing them with individual coaching. However, if you have a potential star performer whom you think could benefit from coaching, how you provide coaching is not as straightforward as simply engaging a coach for the Gen Y staff member. All too often we have seen this approach fail to deliver the desired results.

See also, ‘Coaching your Generation Y staff member’