Managing frontline employee performance through coaching: does selling experience matter?

Abstract

Purpose The impact of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance has received initial support in literature in recent years. However, no studies have explored if this impact should vary according to the career stage that the employee is in. If an interaction effect exists, then managers should expect different results when coaching people in different stages of their careers. Otherwise, all employees (independently of their career stage) can benefit from the positive impact of coaching and, thus, the manager can expect a continuous positive outcome on employee performance throughout their careers. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderation effect of an employee’s career stage on the relationship between managerial coaching and performance. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 318 financial advisors from two Canadian banks was used to collect data on the amount, and quality, of managerial coaching received by the employees, as well as their performance. multigroup confirmatory factor analysis ran in AMOS was used to test the moderation effect of experience. Findings Results confirmed the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee behavioral and sales performance, but no moderation effect was found. The measuring and causal models showed invariance for employees in their early (one to seven years of selling experience), middle (8-15 years), and late (more than 15 years) career stages, suggesting that managerial coaching will make a consistent contribution to performance throughout all the stages of the employee’s career. Research limitations/implications The study makes two main contributions to the scientific literature. First, it offers an original study examining the effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector. Second, it examines the role of selling experience as a moderator in coaching processes, thus contributing to the limited literature on career stages. Practical implications The study suggests that managers should equally devote their coaching efforts to all employees, independently of their selling experience. Contrary to the belief that rookies will benefit more from coaching, and that “you cannot teach an old dog new tricks,” results suggest that managerial coaching makes a continuous contribution to performance throughout all the stages of an employee’s career. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderation effect of selling experience on coaching consequences, and one of the few to present evidence of the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector.

The effect of customer orientation coaching on employee’s individual performance and financial and non-financial performance

“…Although managerial and executive coaching are common in some aspects and both derived from one root (Hagen, 2012), research has identified these two streams as two distinct structures (D’Abate et al , 2003 Hagen,2012; Pousa, 2012), as well as these two streams, differ from other managerial behaviours such as monitoring, coordinating and providing feedback (Ingram et al , 2005; McLean et al , 2005; Pousa, 2012; Richardson, 2009). Recently, researchers have argued that managerial coaching is based on a high-quality exchange between coach and employee which leads to more open communication between them, higher levels of empowerment, and better working relationships (Onyemah, 2009; Pousa et al , 2017). This perspective on managerial coaching is especially important in the field of banking as it leads to the development of employee’s customer orientation (Pousa and Mathieu, 2014a), as well as customer-oriented behaviours leading to increased customer loyalty and Increasing banks’ competitive advantage (Bhat and Darzi, 2016).…”

The effects of nonwork and personal resources on frontline bank employees’ work engagement and critical job outcomes

“…Karatepe and Aga’s (2013) past study in Northern Cyprus indicated that job resourcefulness activated FBEs’ job performance but it did not serve as a mediator between coworker support and job performance. Pousa et al ’s (2017) study conducted in Canadian banks indicated that managerial coaching fostered behavioral and sales performances. In a recent study of employees in an insurance company in China, there was no empirical support for sales orientation as a mediator between managerial coaching and job performance (Pousa et al , 2018).…”

Employees’ judgment and decision making in the banking industry

“…Despite its significance, studies in the field of the banking industry are considerably lacking compared to those in other academic disciplines. Decision making in the banking industry has a high likelihood of forming biases due to heuristics in decision making because of uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity of policy goals and fallibility of information (Pousa et al , 2017). In particular, considering the ripple effect of a financial policy, it is crucial to conduct systematic research on whether heuristics and biases exist in the decision making processes of the policy makers who oversee financial decision making (Chen et al , 2017).…”