The Short Course on Workplace Coaching and Mentoring sponsored by the Australia Awards and Alumni Engagement Program – Philippines paved the way for the Bureau of Equipment (BOE) to better understand coaching and mentoring in our workplace. Admittedly, BOE had insufficient knowledge on the matter. While we understood Strategic Performance Management System (SPMS), we did not know how to properly coach. Sure, we would have weekly pep talks; however, they were not for coaching or mentoring.
Fortunately, I was selected to participate in the said short course. As part of our Re-Entry Action Plan (REAP), we formed a group to cascade what we learned to 18 supervising engineers – ten females and eight males – coming from six Bureaus in the DPWH. We modified the learning materials provided to address the gaps and needs of our participants. We used interactive discussions, workshops, homework, and other engaging activities to effectively implement our online cascading, which was conducted two hours per day for 12 days. After every session, we would debrief and discuss what went well and what can be improved.
We were particularly challenged by participants who were not adept with Zoom, but we managed somehow. Of the 18 participants we trained, four are from BOE, and their individual REAP is to coach a direct report.
Going beyond the requirements of our REAP, I will try to improve our Bureau further by accomplishing the following by the end of December 2021:
- A policy establishing a workplace coaching and mentoring culture in the BOE will be institutionalised;
- Three BOE personnel will be coached and mentored by trained coaches/mentors; and
- Coaching and mentoring journals will be used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of policy implementation. With this, we hope to realize our vision that BOE is enabling the DPWH to increase its PRIME-HRM maturity level.
