Coaching to improve performance
Client: Specialist manufacturer in advanced technology
Our client is an award winning specialist manufacturer, providing industrial and commercial solutions across the UK and beyond. The Company has grown exponentially over recent years and invests in its staff and managers to ensure they have the right skills and experience to achieve its aims. It’s essential for the Company to ensure that the demands placed on employees, which can be considerable, do not adversely impact on the needs of the Company and so they are committed to the support and development of their staff and managers.
The Solution:
As part of a wider employee support, welfare and training strategy, the Sussex HR Hub’s experienced coaches and mentors are currently supporting our client with coaching programmes for individual employees.
What we did:
An example involved an individual who needed to improve her communication style and attitude towards other staff members. This had been observed by the Managing Director who was concerned that such a key employee was, apparently, not coping with the demands of her job. The employee also felt that her approach to colleagues was having an negative impact on achieving her own and her team’s objectives.
Initially, the employee met with Anne Davies, one of the Sussex HR Hub’s experienced coaches. They established a rapport and agreed to continue with a series of fortnightly coaching sessions which began by discovering what the ‘problem’ was.
The coaching helped establish that the employee had difficulty saying ‘no’ when her workload was already full. Her work priorities were becoming stretched which in turn exacerbated her anxiety and stress levels. Her communication style and behaviour then became more fractured and abrupt due to the pressure she was putting herself under by taking on everything that was being asked of her.
On the face of it, what the MD and colleagues were seeing and feeling were the visual, vocal and verbal signs of someone who was displaying anxiety and stress. However, the real issue for the employee was her workload and inability to prioritise due to feeling overwhelmed. The coaching sessions helped build her confidence so that she could weigh up priorities and, where necessary, determine alternative solution. The coaching also helped her develop workload planning and prioritising skills.
The Outcome:
The employee is now much more ‘in control’ of her workload, she is able to assess each task asked of her and discuss options and outcomes with management and colleagues. This, in turn, has kept her anxiety and stress levels to a minimum, helping her to communicate with staff in a more relaxed and controlled way.
I’m pleased to see such a huge improvement in performance in a relatively short time, but more importantly, she is much happier in her work and, once again, is contributing and leading on some key projects. This employee is an important and essential member of our middle management team and at one time we thought we might lose her … but thanks to the coaching programme we are once again seeing her real potential. Managing Director