Counselling and Coaching – Approaches as redundant as the workforce!

So we all know that the public sector reforms and efficiency drives are now well underway!.

For those employed in this sector, what lies ahead is complete uncertainty. Will l have a job? Where will I be? How will this affect my home life? What about all the hopes and dreams I have for myself and the people I care for?

If you’re in one of these organisations right now, and you’re leading and managing this massive slaughter – can I call upon you to think about how to best support staff for life after employment with you.

The traditional approach in organisational change is to provide very structured and equitable processes so that everyone is treated ‘fairly’ – a word we have heard so much of lately. And in the typical realms of a Human Resource philosophy we see things such as:

• Whole staff engagement exercises
• Organisational change frameworks and policies
• Offer of counselling and 1-2-1 support
• Provision of 1-2-1 coaching and wider career coaching
• Provision of funding for tailored educational courses

But in this new era of economic and global uncertainty – these approaches are as redundant as the workforce. For heavens sake, please don’t think that funding a degree or sending some one off to complete an NVQ is going to help them into the next job.

The traditional career development pathways of defined jobs and competences is being eroded – what we will have in its place are new ways of working that have yet to be designed. What we will need from the existing workforce is the ability to prepare themselves for a world where job titles have less meaning and where hierarchy becomes something of the past – so reminiscent of the public sector and so hard for many to give up.

So my challenge to organisations in the throes of all of this, is to think differently about how you support staff right now. Here are just 3 things that you might want to think about…….

• Forget the 1-2-1 coaching- it’s a waste of money in large scale change of this nature – go for group facilitation and inquiry to develop interpersonal skills, insightful questioning, creative decision making and self resilience. When people leave their organisations they need to have the ability to challenge themselves and others, and question their very being as social and work support structures start to diminish.

• Don’t waste resources by ploughing large sums of money into individual cases – you’ll be getting a much bigger return on your investment by funding collective development so that the benefit has far greater strategic reach and amplification. Have some ethics about how you discharge your final budget.

• Consider your staff as being larger than their ‘workselves’ – start preparing staff for life beyond their immediate employment. They are much more than a member of staff that walks through your doors each day – they have lives, dreams, ambitions and past times that already absorb a large chunk of their working day. Think about how you could help them to consider the opportunities that lie in all of these – and again use group facilitation and inquiry as a collective approach to share the learning and raise the spirit in everyone!

What I’m advocating here is to go outside of the standard HR approach to organisational change. It’s fine in local, discrete and for one-off episodes. But with the scale of what’s ahead both nationally and globally – the standard approach holds no favours for anyone.

Staff are going to have to be much more creative as they think about finding an income in the new world – surely organisations owe it to themselves and their workforce, to show how such creativity is achieved in the first place!