Employee Counseling At Workplace

What is Employee Counseling?

Employee counseling can be explained as providing help and support to the employees to face
and sail through the difficult times in life. At many points of time in life or career people come
across some problems either in their work or personal life when it starts influencing and
affecting their performance and, increasing the stress levels of the individual. Counseling is
guiding, consoling, advising and sharing and helping to resolve their problems whenever the
need arises.

Technically, Psychological Counseling, a form of counseling is used by the experts to analyze

the work related performance and behavior of the employees to help them cope with it,
resolve the conflicts and tribulations and re-enforce the desired results.

Ingredients of counseling:

Counseling of staff is becoming an essential function of the managers. The organization can
either take the help of experienced employees or expert, professional counselor to take up the
counseling activities. Increasing complexities in the lives of the employees need to address
various aspects like:

1. Performance counseling: Ideally, the need for employee counseling arises when the
employee shows signs of declining performance, being stressed in office-hours, bad
decision-making etc. In such situations, counseling is one of the best ways to deal with
them. It should cover all the aspects related to the employee performance like the
targets, employee's responsibilities, problems faced, employee aspirations, inter-
personal relationships at the workplace etc.

2. Personal and Family Wellbeing: Families and friends are an important and inseparable
part of the employee's life. Many a times, employees carry the baggage of personal
problems to their workplaces, which in turn affects their performance adversely.
Therefore, the counselor needs to strike a comfort level with the employees and,
counseling sessions involving their families can help to resolve their problems and
getting them back to work- all fresh and enthusiastic.

3. Other Problems: Other problems can range from work-life balance to health problems.
Counseling helps to identify the problem and help him / her to deal with the situation
in a better way.

Need of counseling at workplace

Apart from their personal problems, there are various reasons which can create stress for the
employees at the workplace like unrealistic targets or work-load, constant pressure to meet
the deadlines, career problems, responsibility and accountability, conflicts or bad inter-
personal relations with superiors and subordinates, problems in adjusting to the organizational
culture. Counseling helps the employee to share and look at his problems from a new
perspective, help himself and to face and deal with the problems in a better way. Counseling
at workplace is a way of the organization to care about its employees.

Prepared By, 1
Makame Mahmud
Hurdles faced for counseling at workplace

1. The biggest bottleneck in employee counseling at the workplace is the lack of trust on
the employee's part to believe in the organization or his superior to share and
understand his problems.
2. The confidentiality that the counselor won't disclose his personal problems or issues to
others in the organization.
3. Time, effort and resources required on the part of the organization are a constraint.

Benefits of counseling

1. Helping the individual to understand and help himself

2. Understand the situations and look at them with a new perspective and positive
outlook
3. Helping in better decision making
4. Alternate solutions to problems
5. Coping with the situation and the stress

Basic requisites of employee counseling

1. Employee Counseling needs to be tackled carefully, both on the part of the

organization and the counselor. The counseling can turn into a sensitive series of
events for the employee and the organization; therefore, the counselor should be
either a professional or an experienced, mature employee.
2. The counselor should be flexible in his approach and a patient listener. He should have
the warmth required to win the trust of the employee so that he can share his thoughts
and problems with him without any inhibitions.
3. Active and effective listening is one of the most important aspects of the employee
counseling.
4. Time should not be a constraint in the process.
5. The counselor should be able to identify the problem and offer concrete advice.
6. The counselor should be able to help the employee to boost the morale and spirit of
the employee, create a positive outlook and help him take decisions to deal with the
problem.

Objective of Counseling:

1. Understanding self
2. Making impersonal decisions
3. Setting achievable goals which enhance growth
4. Planning in the present to bring about desired future
5. Effective solutions to personal and interpersonal problems.
6. Coping with difficult situations
7. Controlling self defeating emotions
8. Acquiring effective transaction skills.
9. Acquiring 'positive self-regard' and a sense of optimism about one's own ability to
satisfy one's basic needs.

Prepared By, 2
Makame Mahmud
When to counsel?

An employee should be counseled when he or she has personal problems that affect job
performance. Some signs of a troubled employee include
1. Sudden change of behavior
2. Preoccupation
3. Irritability
4. Increased accidents
5. Increased fatigue
6. Excessive drinking
7. Reduced production
8. Waste
9. Difficulty in absorbing training

The set of skills required for an efficient counselor are:

1. Decency skills i.e. social etiquettes, warm manners

2. Excellent communication skills which also include non-verbal communication and
listening skills
3. Objectivity
4. Maintaining confidentiality
5. Empathy

The Counseling Process:

Step 1. Describe the changed behavior. Let the employee know that the organization is
concerned with work performance. The supervisor maintains work standards by being
consistent in dealing with troubled employees. Explain in very specific terms what the
employee needs to do in order to perform up to the organization's expectations. Don't
moralize. Restrict the confrontation to job performance.
Step 2. Get employee comments on the changed behavior and the reason for it. Confine any
negative comments to the employee's job performance. Don't diagnose; you are not an expert.
Listen and protect confidentiality.
Step 3. Agree on a solution. Emphasize confidentiality. Don't be swayed or misled by emotional
please, sympathy tactics, or "hard-luck" stories. Explain that going for help does not exclude
the employee from standard disciplinary procedures and that it does not open the door for
special privileges.
Step 4. Summarize and get a commitment to change. Seek commitment from the employee to
meet work standards and to get help, if necessary, with the problem.
Step 5. Follow up. Once the problem is resolved and a productive relationship is established,
follow up is needed.

Prepared By, 3
Makame Mahmud