How to boost your talent

Coaching works for sports stars and it should work for would-be corporate high flyers as well. JULIE MIDDLETON reports.

Look at Arthur Lydiard and his runners, Graham Henry in his mid-1990s Blues days, Manchester United's Alex Ferguson; pair a top bod with the right prod and you've got a world-beater.

But it's not working like that in New Zealand's corporations. Training schemes are a thing of the past in many trimmed-down business machines.

Bosses are haemorrhaging of their best earners as baby boomers retire and independent, iconoclastic Generation Xers - of whom there are far fewer - desert overseas or to start-ups.

Companies that know that a bundle of cash does not equal an effective retention strategy are buying into schemes more focused on individual staff members' ambitions, says TMP senior consultant Paul Stevenson.

"Career coaching" is the pairing of manager and staffer with a trained coach who helps both sides to match career aims and company goals.

It seems like a good weapon in the war for talent in a "me-first" age - unless you believe that it might make staff more poachable, encourage them to think about their future and leave, or simply get demanding.

"All three [fears] are fallacious," says Stevenson.

"Talent is looking for development and if the organisation does not want to play a part, staff will find organisations who will."

A labour turnover study just released by the University of Auckland's Erling Rasmussen finds that one in two people leave their jobs because of the prospect of more interesting work elsewhere.

"Money is not always the reason people leave their jobs," he says.

"We found that often, employees don't feel stimulated by their work or appreciated by their employers."

An Australasian study by TMP echoes this, finding that one in two workers quit a job for "career issues".

Salary prompted just 10 per cent to leave, and issues such as company performance, personality clashes and contract expiry totalled less than 10 per cent each.

The key to keeping high performers, says TMP career development team leader Liz Wotherspoon, is finding out what spells success for them and how that aligns with business goals.

Keeping key staff even an extra year by offering them career coaching, says Wotherspoon, gives a return on an investment, time to put a succession plan in place, and an environment where knowledge and client relationships can be transferred before they walk out the door.

"Attitudes [of employers] have to shift from "they owe us" to "we owe them".

"They are volunteers - they choose to be here. And they are volunteers in terms of their attitude - they have a choice whether they continue."

Your top talents are "like frogs in a wheelbarrow - they can jump out any time they want", says Wotherspoon.

And they do.

The update last year of the 1997 benchmark study by McKinsey, The War For Talent, found that 89 per cent of bosses surveyed thought it was more difficult to attract talented people now than it was three years ago.

Ninety per cent thought it was now more difficult to retain them.

Chief executives know the problem is as big as a barn door. Just 14 per cent of the managers in last year's update (and 23 per cent in 1997) strongly agreed that their companies attracted and retained highly talented people.

Says Wotherspoon: "The number of years of service you can expect from an employee is declining.

"It's loyalty we're looking for - but loyalty is something more than satisfaction."

Still sceptical?

Wotherspoon and Stevenson put clients on the spot with these questions:

* Do you have a strategic plan to achieve the objectives for your organisation over the next two years?

* Do you have the staff to help you achieve those objectives?

* How easy would they be to achieve if you lost some of your key staff?

* Do you know which of your key staff are looking elsewhere?

Answer in the negative, or without confidence, and you may need to get a corporate Lydiard in, double quick.

However, coaching succeeds only if managers put ego aside and genuinely get involved, says Stevenson.

"People are reluctant to coach people to surpass them.

"That's the first challenge for managers as coaches: to encourage somebody to be better than you."

The second is to take coaching seriously. "It's dangerous if the organisation simply views it as a fad and there is no long-term commitment to the staff and to the programme. It is dangerous if talent are told that they are valued and then the organisation does little to demonstrate their value."

"And it is dangerous if it is simply viewed as career planning re-labelled."

Links

TMP