We live in an era where each and every organization is fast-paced and has a stressful working environment with increased competition in the market area. The workforce of any industry or cooperation requires a healthy amount of motivation, concentration and capability to ensure complete investment of their worthwhile efforts. In any management firm, there are various challenging situations like interpersonal conflicts, the stress of deadlines or harassment cases where appropriate solutions from mental health care experts might be required. An employee assistance program is therefore arranged in organizations to ensure the mental well-being of the employees. This assistance program provides guidance in terms of counselling to those employees who need it. Employee counselling is a psychological technique that is used in various forms. The main objective of it is to support the employees by providing them advice, guidance, suggestions to solve the prevailing problems and improve physical, mental conditions and performance which can take many forms. It is also conducted with a problem-solving approach by supervisors, managers or consultants. Employee counselling is conducted mainly to provide job-related, personal and confidential help to those who are facing the problems.
In order to execute a successful counselling program, it is necessary to consider several factors like the counsellor needs to be a professional who is flexible with his or her approach. Being an active listener along with having patience is another major requirement. It is also crucial for the counsellors to suggest advice that is practical as well as possible to follow. These factors ensure that the employees’ spirit and morale will be boosted and they will be capable of decision making. There are different types of employee counselling that fulfils certain specific needs, the four types of employee counselling are:
1. Performance Counselling: The counsellor should try to identify the underlying causes behind the employee’s poor performance. The reasons could be office stress, unachievable deadlines, problems in interpersonal relations with other employees, etc. After recognizing the problem, the counsellor can advise about how to deal with it.
2. Disciplinary Counselling: This type of counselling takes place when an employee’s behaviour falls short of the standards expected. An employee may suddenly start picking up fights, become irritable, be absent from work for long, etc. The counsellor here attempts to analyse all the reasons that could be causing the behavioural lapses.
3. Personal Counselling: Families and friends are integral parts of any human being’s life; tension in a worker’s personal life affects his work performance adversely. Personal problems could include sickness of a family member, marital conflicts, dysfunctional family life, problems with children, family feuds, etc. The counsellor should lend an empathetic ear to the employee’s personal problems and support them in resolving them.
4. Stress Management in the Workplace: Employees may become anxious and tense due to their high-pressure workload. This not only affects their productivity on the job but also their mental health. It is the duty of the organization to take care of the employees’ well-being and provide them guidelines for dealing with stress. Bigger organizations may engage experts for providing psychiatric counselling to employees as part of employee welfare programmes.
There are numerous incidents where employee counselling is especially imperative. One of the major areas is conflicts that arise in intergroup as well as intragroup members. This is carefully resolved by giving each member a chance to express their difficulties. In such scenarios it is vital to recognize every member’s individual contribution, promoting healthy patterns of communication and listening skills and bringing a collaborative attitude to the table. It is also necessary to point out the cultural differences and power imbalances with care, to enhance the understanding in these interpersonal relationships. Workplace bullying is another area where employee counselling is of immense help, as the person bullied might have a loss of self-esteem and it, in turn, gives rise to increased absenteeism. In such cases, disciplinary actions are taken in order to re-establish an atmosphere that promotes a healthy and appropriate attitude of all workers. There are also a series of stressors including the unattainable deadlines of projects which can lead to a state of burnout for employees. The mental health of employees is observed to be affected due to discrimination as well as low job satisfaction. Some path models indicate that poor work control and heavy on-call duty are directly associated with job dissatisfaction and short sleeping time and indirectly associated with burnout and poor mental health (Killgore, 2008). Providing individual employee counselling on such occasions helps the client to openly express their expectations and different types of incentives can be provided to increase their motivation and levels of satisfaction.
There are a few challenges of employee counselling that also needs to be taken into consideration. One of the major issues includes a sense of lack of trust in the counselling system due to stigmas and lack of awareness that can easily stand as a hindrance. The amount of time and money invested in the entire counselling process also arises as a difficulty due to the limited resources of small companies. Lastly, the ineffectiveness of the counsellor can defeat the very objectives of the counselling program.
As an assistance program, however, employee counselling largely consists of many key benefits that can genuinely aid a worker psychologically. Releasing emotional tension is one of the functions it serves where it might not solve the problem but removes the mental blocks to the solution. It also guides an employee to set realistic goals by understanding the business environment thoroughly. The program also works both ways where the employer’s perspectives can also be altered which can lead to setting mutually agreeable goals for the future. Overall, employee counselling attempts to nourish an individual employee from a holistic view to help the concerned worker gain a healthy perspective, improve performance by developing motivation, expanding positive attitude, increasing focus as well as their level of confidence. These personality factors enhance their skills which results in high efficiency and productivity, both of which works in favour of the entire organisation.
– Urveez Kakalia & Debanjana Banerjee.