Why your retention strategy should focus on building a coaching culture
Retention, retention, retention. With the Great Resignation in full flight, it might feel like this is all anyone is talking about. While we haven’t felt this mass exodus in Australian as keenly as our American friends, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we’ve just experienced the highest job mobility rate in 10 years – with 2.1 million people leaving or losing a job in the year ending February 2022 (and it’s worth noting that this runs concurrently with the lowest retrenchment rate on record).
Why does this matter? It costs on average 33% of an employee’s salary to replace them. Think about that for a second – take an average employee and divide their salary by three. This is how much you’ll spend, on top of their salary, to bring someone new into their position once you pay for recruitment, training, and time to get them up to speed. Now consider that one in three hires will leave within two years. What will this cost you long-term? What could that money mean in other areas of your business?
Retention strategies can be many and varied, but there is a consensus on a few key areas: employees want to feel valued, they want to see a path to development, and they want flexibility in how they get their work done.
We all know the short-term sugar highs that will hit these nerves: give them more money! Promise promotions! Let them work from home! But there is one strategy that will not only hit the notes your employees are looking for but also pay dividends in the long term: build a coaching culture.
It’s hard to argue with the value of coaching when done well. It’s the easiest way a leader can demonstrate that they value their people, and to demonstrate that the path to their development is important. Spending time to develop their skills and understand their motivation is critical to any employee’s longevity in a role, both for their own satisfaction in the work and their ability to upskill and move with the organisation. Where coaching also provides flexibility is in the ability for a good coach to tailor development to the individual. And if COVID has taught us anything, it’s that most work can occur anywhere – this goes for coaching too.
It seems like a no-brainer; get your leaders coaching, retain your talent. And yet – coaching often gets abandoned in the face of rising attrition. When our time feels squeezed tight, coaching might feel like an extra – and let’s be honest, if our leaders are spending hours coaching without knowing how to deliver performance out of those conversations, it can feel like wasted time. But coaching doesn’t have to be like this. Short, sharp, frequent and targeted behavioural coaching is far more effective and doable in the time-poor environment we’re so often in.
If you want to build a strong coaching culture that will benefit your business for the long-term and deliver results quickly, invest in your leaders spending more frequent, quality time with their people, focused on the small changes they can action immediately.
A Deloitte study on the impact of COVID on the insurance industry predicted that for life insurance, reduced consumer spending and market volatility would contribute to lower new business volumes and reduced spend on existing accounts. This certainly played out for many life insurers. Life insurer NobleOak; however, managed to grow through the pandemic, increasing sales, conversion, customer satisfaction and taking out our Top 10 award among others. How did they do it? Their strategy was retention – and they actioned it through coaching:
