Career Consulting In Organisations
What are the outcomes of bringing in external consultants to manage career conversations?
Employees now expect to have structured career conversations outside the appraisal process. This enhances your capability to retain existing staff and to attract high-quality applicants.
Research has found the following impact of career coaching in organisations:
- future direction (60%)
- self-insight (60%)
- values information (55%)
- feel good (50%)
- job move (37%)
- career skills (22%)
- retention (12%)
Occasionally career conversations will lead to individuals deciding to leave an organisation and this can cause employers concern. However, this is relatively rare and if it does happen, it may well prevent the organisation from having months (or even years) of under-productivity or negative attitudes to deal with. More usually, individuals will feel connected to their work, more loyal to their employer and more motivated to contribute. There is research evidence to prove that in an environment of internal promotion, training and development opportunities and recognition of a job well done, staff are more likely to stay put than be tempted to leave.
References: Hirsh and Jackson (2002), Nathan and Hill (2006).
"Parkhouse Bell is a rapidly growing recruitment business, with offices in London, Australia and the UAe. We didn't want our expansion to jeopardise our high standard of client and candidate service. We needed to stop and think about what our clients really expected from us and how we could continue to differentiate ourselves in a competitive market. Zena facilitiated a series of workshops for us. This was a great exercise in itself - she encouraged the team to take responsibility for the outcome and our processes have improved as a result. Zena used coaching techniques to make us think for ourselves and come up with some more ways that we can add value to our customers. It was a very valuable investment that would work in all businesses and great fun too."
Coaching is a one to one relationship where a coach supports, collaborates with and facilitates client learning by helping a client to identify and achieve future goals through assessment, discovery, reflection, goal setting and strategic action.