The benefits of mentoring and coaching in the public sector.

Abstract

The South African Public Sector is under increasing pressure to deliver services to the vast majority of previously disenfranchised people who expect improved living conditions. It has become apparent that management styles need to adapt to a changing and varied work force. Leadership must work in conjunction with equity and transformation, affirmative action and gender equality. Mentoring and coaching is gaining increasing prominence in contemporary organisations as a key management intervention for skills enhancement as well as for promoting employees’ personal growth through improved job performance. The benefits of positive changes following mentoring and coaching are well documented. A project at the Frontier Hospital in Queenstown commenced in January 2009, and extended over a period of four months. Two mentoring and coaching workshops were held to create a broad awareness and a common understanding about mentoring and coaching as tools for learning and growth. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of mentoring and coaching on managers following attendance of the workshops. The focus of this study was to establish the effectiveness of the mentoring and coaching intervention and to critically evaluate its impact. A questionnaire which was designed to obtain demographic information, length of service, role in the organisation, and responses to specific statements on the effects of mentoring and coaching was distributed to 33 managers who attended the workshop. The majority of the respondents (73%) were Black (African), Whites and Coloureds comprised a total of 27%. The results revealed that the race and gender of the respondents did not significantly affect mentoring and coaching, following the chi square analysis of the data. The respondents were also in unanimous agreement that the programme was beneficial and functional specialisation of the respondents did not affect their assessment of the mentoring and coaching programme, however, all senior managers were white males whilst females at 39.4% occupied lower management positions compared to only 6% males. Overall the research conducted reveals overwhelmingly that mentoring and coaching did improve work performance. The study also revealed that mentoring and coaching had far reaching positive effects in improving work-place performance at Frontier Hospital, Eastern Cape, South Africa.