Establishing effective organisational coaching strategies

To enable a business to grow and to uplift the economic and social development of its employees, it is vital that skills are provided to individuals. Businesses today strive to retain employees, as their skills learnt, prove to be a valuable asset that takes years to replace. For this reason, all means available are utilised to retain employees in the workplace. The term coaching is a relatively newcomer to the world of business and is seen to take a holistic view of the individual and focuses on work, corporate values, personal needs and career development. The main objective of this study was to identify coaching strategies that can be implemented by organisations in order to ensure the retention and development of employees. Businesses have to rely on employees to help them achieve financial growth, outperform their competitors, produce innovative products and to achieve long-term goals. These tasks would be impossible to achieve if the interests of employees were neglected. It was established from the literature survey that the coaching style of leadership involved more than simply training managers in coaching skills. A whole new coaching culture needed to be implemented in businesses in order to bring about change. Coachees rely on effective coachers to provide guidance and to demonstrate the skills needed. Based on various models in the literature survey a coaching model was formulated. The empirical survey was conducted at five selected companies in the Buffalo City Municipal area. A theoretical model for organisational coaching was developed and tested by means of a questionnaire. It emerged that employees at lower levels had not been involved in any form of coaching