{"id":24657,"date":"2023-04-10T13:54:03","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T18:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/?p=24657"},"modified":"2023-04-10T13:54:03","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T18:54:03","slug":"growing-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/growing-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring is in the air! The flowers are blooming, the leaves are sprouting, the grass is greening up (and baseball is back\u2014Go Mets!). Tis the season for growth, renewal, and rebirth.<\/p>\n

For employees, it is the perfect time to brush up on current skills and acquire new ones to build their performance portfolio and help them achieve their career aspirations. Coaching and mentoring can play a major role in making that happen.<\/p>\n

In fact, employees rank mentoring and coaching as the #1 way they learn at work, according to Valoir\u2019s new report, The Future of Learning at Work<\/em>, based on a survey of more than 1,000 employees in North America and Europe. So it\u2019s not surprising that the coaching industry\u2019s valuation is predicted to increase by $5 billion over the next several years, according to CoachHub\u2019s research<\/a>. In fact, 89 percent of respondents<\/a> who use coaching products predict an increase in coaching investments over the next 12 months, reveals Jonathan Passmore, senior vice president of Coaching at CoachHub. Further, he says, 47 percent of respondents plan to reskill or upskill their people to support business changes.<\/p>\n

Lack of Technology<\/h2>\n

That said, Valoir\u2019s report shows fewer than 2 in 10 employees currently give their company an \u201cA\u201d grade for supporting mentoring and coaching. Of note, fewer than half of the companies have any technology to support mentoring and coaching\u2014an important enabler when in-office mentoring may not be possible with so many companies continuing remote or hybrid work environments created during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

CoachHub\u2019s Passmore notes that digital coaching<\/a> provides personalized programs so employees can focus on specific areas where they need extra support, such as certain behavioral skills.<\/p>\n

On the sales side, Erica Schultz, chief marketing officer at sales training company RAIN Group, offers five best practices<\/a> for managers to coach sellers on sales conversations. These include providing artificial intelligence-driven coaching, holding live simulations, and sharing recorded simulations.<\/p>\n

One company that has found virtual mentoring to be particularly effective is SAP\u2014a highly distributed organization with more than 105,000 employees in locations around the world. In his article,<\/a> Mark Crofton, head of Sales Enablement at SAP, offers three tips to transform virtual mentoring and coaching programs.<\/p>\n

Mentoring Best Practices<\/h2>\n

Chronus<\/a>\u00a0recently released its new\u00a0Mentoring Benchmarks Report: Quit Navigating in the Dark<\/em><\/a>, which pulled from a deep dive of 2,700 mentoring programs across 4.5 million participants and spotlights benchmarks and best practices for mentoring programs across the areas of enrollment, matching, and engagement.<\/p>\n

Some key findings from the report:<\/p>\n