Coaching approach to Human Resource Management

Coaching is an intervention that awakens the innate potential within individuals. Therefore, I would like to introduce the importance of coaching in the Human Resource Management (HRM) function, starting with recruitment. Human Resource Management may be defined as the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization’s most valued assets—the people. It involves seven steps; Recruitment, Competence development, Career development, Performance Management, Motivation, Succession planning, and Exit management. Today’s organizations have a standard approach to recruitment based on job descriptions, Role profiles and Competence indicators. These tools are good enough to find “the right person for the job” that is to say, finding someone with the right qualifications, right experience, good references and right skills. The emphasis here is on the job. The approach however, sidelines the importance of personality, character, values, and personal expectations. Such attributes have a great impact on the job, person alignment and on productivity. Between 2006 and 2007 a study carried out by Coach Africa established that 86 percent of middle management staff in large private organizations in neighboring Kampala were in the wrong jobs! The survey further presented personal motivation to do the job as the top most factor that determines productivity of the executives. When people are misplaced, they usually find their jobs very stressful, they do not enjoy their work, they have to depend on external factors for motivation and it becomes very difficult for them to deliver exceptional results. Coaching as an intervention seeks to correct this. In order to maximize productivity, one must find “the person for whom the job is right” and, Coaching provides the missing link. Coaching does not mean doing away with tradition, but rather, to complete it. Coaching has the tools necessary to establish the personality, character, visions, values and expectations of an individual and to fit these to the role, reducing the likelihood for the personality or job mismatch. It is therefore a necessary addition to any serious recruitment process. In our next article we will discuss coaching within the second stage of Competence development. Veronica@coachafrica.com

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Coaching approach to Human Resource Management