Training Industry Magazine - March/April 2017 - 55

TECH TALK

AMAR DHALIWAL

HOW KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS

ARE TRANSFORMING
COACHING
Nearly 70 percent of companies'
budgets are dedicated to human capital
costs, according to Human Capital
Management Institute. With so much
invested in the total cost of workforce,
the single biggest organizational
expense, it is not surprising that mid-tolarge sized companies invest in coaching
and mentoring to enhance their
investment in employee development
and engagement.
Organizations invest over $1.5 billion
annually in engagement improvement,
according to Bersin & Associates, which
calls engagement an employer's number
one metric.

The success of these traditional
mentoring programs has led to the
development of reverse mentoring
programs, in which more seasoned
executives are paired with younger,
less-experienced employees, so that the
former may learn from the latter. Such
programs, which have been adopted
by companies such as GE, Cisco, The
Hartford and HP, have helped older
executives understand how to bridge
technology, marketing and strategic
management gaps.
WHY DON'T WE DO
MORE WITH OUR EMPLOYEES?

Yet, we all understand the stark reality
that most employees do not feel engaged.
Only 30 percent of employees in the U.S.
and just 13 percent of employees outside
of the U.S. report that they are engaged
with their companies, according to a
Forbes column by Steve Olenski.

Coaching and mentoring programs
are, by their nature, labor intensive.
They require a mentor to assiduously set
aside the time to share their expertise
and advice - and this commitment is
often difficult, especially when coaching
more than one person.

Companies are increasingly turning to
coaching and mentoring to address this
discrepancy, with virtually every Fortune
500 company reporting that they utilize
one or more aspects of mentoring or
corporate coaching.

Let's also admit that some people are
simply better coaches than others and
they will be in greater demand - a
demand that will be difficult to satisfy
with traditional models of coaching and
mentoring.

THE IMPORTANCE OF
COACHING AND MENTORING
Roughly 77 percent of companies that
have workplace coaching and mentoring
programs found them effective in
increasing retention rates, according
to the "Employee Mentoring Programs
Benefits/Risk Assessment and Business
Case" white paper from The Millennium
Group International. And 95 percent of
mentees said their participation in these
programs enhanced their motivation.

Enter a new crop of technologies.
KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS
The ability to easily set up a Knowledge
Network inside organizations is now
changing the way expertise is created
and shared.
Imagine if your foremost experts
could coach and mentor thousands of
their colleagues, with no more effort
than required for one person. This is
now possible.

New technologies allow people to
follow experts in their organization
and benefit from the information and
knowledge being created, consumed
and shared by these experts. In turn, the
expert mentors can recommend - and
even assign - materials back to their
group of followers.

TECHNOLOGY IS
CHANGING THE WAY
EXPERTISE IS CREATED
AND SHARED.
Live video-streaming, a technology just
starting to enter the enterprise, also has
huge potential to transform coaching
and mentoring programs. A mentor
can now live-stream their advice and
thoughts across the globe to thousands
of their mentees - from her smartphone.
The experience is both personal and
scalable. Imagine the impact of your
senior leadership doing this for just
15 to 20 minutes a week in your own
organization.
Of course, these new virtual coaching
and mentoring relationships lack
the humanist aspect of traditional
models, but they have still proven to
be highly effective. It may be the right
time to experiment with these new
technologies in your organization and
let the knowledge flow.
Amar Dhaliwal is the chief evangelist at
EdCast. He was a co-founder of the learning
management pioneer THINQ and, after
its acquisition by Saba in 2005, led Saba's
product, engineering, cloud and customer
operations teams. Email Amar.

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - COACHING AND CULTURE 20 1 7 I WWW. T RAI NINGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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http://www.hcminst.com/whitepaper/orgplus-total-cost-of-workforce/ http://www.hcminst.com/whitepaper/orgplus-total-cost-of-workforce/ http://blog.bersin.com/new-research-understanding-the-employee-engagement-market/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/07/20/8-key-tactics-for-developing-employees/#3b306be0309f http://www.tmgi.net/white_paper/employee_mentoring_white_paper http://www.trainingindustry.com/ezine.aspx

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - March/April 2017