Training and coaching sound like they could refer to the same thing: imparting information that someone else—in this case, your employees—can learn from.
In fact, training and coaching each serve a distinct purpose to your organization and can’t be interchanged. Knowing the differences between the two, and how and when to deploy them, is the key to affecting employee performance and satisfaction.
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Training is best suited to new material or with new employees. Its purpose is to introduce a concept or skill and give the employee a basic proficiency with that topic, which they will then take into practice on the job. Training is often a one-time commitment per topic, rather than an ongoing process.
Coaching
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While training is skills-oriented, the purpose of coaching is to develop talent. We’ve written before that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all training; coaching allows instructors and employees to identify and address the specific issues that training may have missed. It’s also easier to accommodate different learning styles with a more personalized approach.
Why Training & Coaching Are Essential
Training aims to establish a well-informed, high-performing workforce. Coaching works to maintain it. If employees are recurrently falling below expectations, stagnating in their progress towards their goals, or failing to grasp the skills and talents you’re trying to impart on them, the problem might lie in how they are being trained, and what kind of coaching they are (or aren’t) receiving to reinforce that training.
Together, training and coaching benefit both employees and customers. Solid training and coaching support a smooth, stable working environment and improve morale and overall performance. That trickles down to the customer experience – customers know they can rely on the quality of service they’ll get from anyone they may talk to at the company.
Customer feedback also trickles back up into educational efforts, revealing any problem areas in service that need to be addressed on an institutional level.
That’s why CSP builds in plenty of overlap between the customer research and training/coaching components of our customer experience management programs. A superior experience depends on consistent alignment at every level of the organization. If you could use a fresh perspective on effective employee education, we welcome your questions.
For more information about how CSP supports employee & customer engagement, contact us today by phone at (402) 399-8790 ext:101, via our website, or on Twitter @csprofiles.
