To improve and grow, employees need coaching that helps them in the moment, rather than after the fact. Look at the world of sports, where real-time instruction is a given: A golf pro holds your arms as you swing. A football coach calls out to the team between each play. But at fast-moving companies, where employees are often physically separated rather than sitting at adjacent desks all day, it can be tough to provide that kind of personal attention in real-time.
Everyone knows the result: Both the worker and the boss miss opportunities to prevent mistakes and to provide hands-on training that points people in the right direction going forward. Instead of a coach, employees get a manager – someone who pops in now and then to tell them what they did wrong yesterday. Instead of feeling they’ve got a mentor, workers dread the next run-in with the chief, who in turn feels like he or she is always trying to turn the ship after it’s hit the iceberg.
Continuous Coaching
Rypple lets managers give their workers coaching that focuses not on what didn’t get done yesterday, but what they can do today—right now. It’s as quick as sending an email or text, or making a phone call, yet Rypple’s design keeps coaching organized into an all-in-one, easy to find place. Workers don’t need to go scrolling through an archive of past communications to pick out the boss’s guidance, nor are they on the hook to keep track of it all themselves. Rypple not only displays coaching instantly as it comes in, it also organizes it for the long term.
No Need to Dig Through Old Emails
Rypple keeps managers informed and prepared for coaching sessions by letting them quickly see all of the public feedback an employee has recently received on Rypple. There’s no need to go ask others to repeat themselves, or to dig through email archives. (And, if another employee hasn’t said anything, that’s immediately obvious, too.) The review page also includes any notes the manager or employee has added, and goals previously set, so nothing goes missing or forgotten. Managers are always prepared and informed when they provide one-on-one feedback, rather than appearing forgetful or inattentive.
Keep Your Team Focused on the Right Priorities
Rypple also lets managers enter personal or company goals that can be tied to an employee’s coaching. That way, it’s easy for a manager to ensure their direct reports are focused on the right priorities. And just as important, goals aren’t just top-down directives: employees can initiate their own and invite others to join. When coaching 1:1, Rypple literally keeps everyone on the same page.
Rypple coaching is continuous. The manager and employees can add notes between meetings, filing them via email if they prefer. Then, when it’s time to have a formal one-on-one, everything is visible in one place.
Coaching in the Moment
That’s the most important thing Rypple brings to coaching: Immediacy. Because making changes or adding feedback isn’t a multi-step, multi-screen process, busy workers and overloaded managers don’t put off the communication necessary to guide employees to doing a better job. Workers themselves don’t have to slog through a pile of separate messages to quickly see what they need to do differently, what they did right, or what others think. They don’t need to wait to find out how they’re doing, nor do they have to make extra time to catch up on feedback. The result is that coaching happens in the moment, rather than after the fact.
Privacy Controls
Rypple may look and feel like Facebook, but it’s been designed for workplace dynamics. There’s a private one-on-one space where a manager and employee can communicate without worrying they’ll overshare with other coworkers. But the manager also has visibility controls that allow him or her to choose what others on the team can see.
What Rypple does copy from social networks is ease of use and simplicity of interface – everything is right there on the screen, rather than hiding behind a hierarchy of menus or separate pages. Visibility encourages spontaneity and makes it easy to keep on top of things right now, rather than putting them off to deal with later. As priorities change or new actions come up, managers can drag and drop them into the right place. They can check off completed items with a click.
