Develop Employees Through Virtual Coaching

As we wait for the coronavirus pandemic to recede, the fortunate ones are those healthy and working from home in quarantine. However, that doesn’t mean those remote employees have it easy. Now displaced from a traditional office environment for months, they may be feeling disconnected, uninspired, or isolated.

Your employees are being forced to reevaluate their personal and professional lives. They need your help to get through these uncertain times. This might mean understanding how you can better serve your employees by helping them uncover their personal purpose, or envisioning their roles in new ways.

The Harvard Business Review suggests that leaders can help their employees navigate this uncertain time by providing development through coaching. HBR’s joint research with Alive at Work demonstrates how performance improves and burnout rates plummet when employees are encouraged to uncover and use their specific strengths. Providing career development through coaching is a critical for you to help them do just that.

Benefits of Virtual Coaching

There is an immediate requirement for virtual coaching as opposed to face-to-face amidst the pandemic. However, virtual coaching unlocks several additional benefits for both organizations and the individuals participating in the coaching program. While virtual coaching options have been seen as a backup plan in the past, people are now embracing them. In a Cigna survey, 60% of people said technology at work helps them to feel more connected, and enables them to build meaningful relationships. These remote connections are more important than ever right now.

7 Additional benefits of virtual coaching include:

1. Flexibility. Virtual coaching greatly enhances geographic and schedule flexibility. First, organizations aren’t limited by geography when matching coaches and coachees. Virtual coaching frees the organization to make the most beneficial matches – not just the most in proximity. Secondly, coaches and coachees are suddenly freed by simply having to find an Internet connection and a free hour to meet. This eliminates most of the scheduling frustrations.
2. Lower resource burden and financial investment. Face-to-face coaching can be costly in both time and resources for organizations to implement. Virtual coaching alleviates some of availability challenges for talented coaches and cuts down on fringe costs like entertainment or travel.
3. Effectiveness. The “best possible” matches enabled by flexibility also help to ensure better overall outcomes. These real matches generate trust and rapport, the two cornerstones of coaching relationships, more naturally.
4. Responsiveness. Virtual coaching technologies provide more freedom to meet quickly – which enables more just-in-time coaching when participants really need it.
5. Spark casual connections. When the relationships are virtual, participants are more likely to reach out with a quick thought in between formal sessions. This is because virtual communication is already part of the practice.
6. Expands the program. A virtual program takes some of the pressure off by making it easier for employees to participate in the coaching program.
7. Increased employee engagement. While many workforces remain remote for the foreseeable future, cultivating remote connections for employees will be paramount to engagement and retention.

Implement Software to Facilitate Virtual Coaching

A virtual coaching program can be much more intentional than asking employees to schedule meetings via video conference. By implementing coaching software, your organization can better support remote connections and elevate the virtual coaching program overall.

The right software should provide tools that can be used for virtual coaching, including:

• Automated matching
• Virtual meeting scheduling
• Coaching relationship and goal tracking
• Admin reporting

Insala’s coaching software will help you connect and develop your employees with virtual coaching during this unprecedented crisis. Facilitate better connections for your employees and better outcomes for your business even as you are navigating sudden changes.

We’ve helped many organizations launch and transform their coaching programs in our more than 20 years of experience. Now, we’re ready to help you continue your career development efforts virtually.

Please contact us to request a demo and discover how Insala can help you develop a virtual program for coaching employees.