Whilst some organisations might be tempted to reduce their coaching and training commitments for budgetary reasons; or to restrict them to cover only those areas where key skills might be missing; there are other organisations for which coaching and training are viewed more positively.

These latter organisations see coaching and training as vehicles for continuous employee development.

Coaching, they argue, can not only improve and enhance employee performance, but can also lead to greater employee engagement; and therefore increased employee motivation and loyalty.

This view was supported recently by David MacLeod of the government-led Employee Engagement Task Force, when he addressed a group of senior human resources executives during a meeting at the Institute of Directors.

In his address, MacLeod emphasised that coaching ranked alongside the provision of clear instructions, and the permitting of staff autonomy, in helping to build employee engagement.

Coincidentally, Jack Wiley of management research organisation, the Kenexa High performance Institute, recently told Management Today magazine that if companies invest in training, then ‘employees will learn new skills, thereby increasing their engagement’.

In order to be fully effective of course, such coaching and training needs to be provided by an external professional organisation.

Some critics point to the double-edged sword of professional external training in that whilst offering presentational perfection, it can be expensive; and also sometimes too general for the needs of a particular organisation.

There is however, growing interest in a possible solution to this dilemma whereby organisations outsource training to a professional company which puts together a managed training services programme relating to an organisation’s bespoke operational requirements.

Under such an arrangement, the training company can even take on the role of ‘training partner’; providing the organisation with all its current and future coaching needs; and usually at significantly reduced rates compared with standard external training costs.