In order to create effective changes and growth in employees’ professional lives, clients need stellar coaching action plans for employees. They are critical in helping employees track their objectives and milestones in order to reach target goals.
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What is an Employee Coaching Plan?
A successful employee coaching plan communicates the necessary behavior changes or skill advancements needed in order for employees to achieve specific objectives.
Steps of Any Employee Coaching Action Plan
Here is what you need to know about how to create an employee coaching plan:
Determine the Goal
The employee must define what he or she wants to achieve and what improvements he or she must make in order to reach and exceed long-term goals. Knowing the client’s motivation and why this goal is important to achieve will also make it easier to evaluate the skills he’ll need to acquire or strengthen in order to complete this objective. Some tasks that can help move an employee’s progress forward might be to respond to all client emails before lunch or to increase his monthly sales by ten percent more than the previous month. Some of these tasks may be menial but they are still valuable in establishing a new routine for the coachee that’s constantly growth-focused.
Evaluate the Skillset
Successful employee coaching plans require a thorough evaluation of the employee’s strengths, weaknesses, and skills as they relate to her goals. It’s also important to figure out why the employee is struggling, or what skills or resources he’s missing that would be pertinent to completing an action or goal. The employee coaching plan can be formal or informal, but it should be documented. This serves as a reference tool and a guide to improvement.
Set the Time
Decide how often, when, and the duration that these objectives or tasks should be done. For example, an employee might take an online training course to prepare himself for a promotion. To keep on track with the modules of the class, he or she may set aside one hour every Monday and Wednesday before his lunch hour to complete some coursework. Incorporating it into his or her regular schedule and establishing this time for one specific task ahead of time makes it easier to stay on track with the different steps of the employee coaching plan.
Give A Deadline
To ensure maximum effectiveness of coaching action plans, clients need to set up a time frame for each specific goal or milestone to be completed by. This helps to keep everyone moving forward and is imperative for tracking progress or any problems that need to be corrected. Hopefully, having a timeline of completion will also excite and motivate employees to make progress in their coaching plans.
Keep Updated
Employees and coaches should schedule regular check-ins with each other to make sure everything is going as it should and there are no issues or questions keeping them from staying on track. During these chats, coaches ask their coachees for their input for ways to alter the employee coaching plan that would better support the employee in achieving their goals.
Hold Them Accountable
Perhaps the biggest challenge is determining how an employee/coachee will stay accountable for the work. Are there appropriate consequences for failure to reach goals or rewards for attaining them? Rewards and consequences may naturally occur anyhow, but it’s also helpful to map these out for the employee. Discussing them ahead of time will hopefully encourage greater productivity and prevent employees from feeling blindsided or discouraged should negative consequences occur.
A coaching action plan is meant to develop the employee’s skills, guide them towards a specific outcome, and complete goals faster, easier, and more efficiently. A good employee coaching plan for managers should continually serve as a guideline for the continuation of the employee’s growth even after her time with his coach is up. It can motivate the coachee to persistently take action that will progress her development in a professional workspace for years to come.
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CoachDiversity Institute believes in the power of coaching in the workplace to boost performance and improve overall company culture. Our Certified Diversity Coaches can help your leaders meet personal and professional goals with one-on-one coaching support. We have experts who can help bring organizational transformation through foundational coach training, one-on-one executive coaching and diversity coach certification. Contact us today to learn more.