Importance of Employee Counseling

Introduction

Picture 1: Employee Counseling
Source: (Vantagecircle, 2021)

Employee counseling or workplace counseling is a modern Human Resource Management (HRM) practice, that is used to maintain employees’ mental wellbeing. Counselling is a discussion on employees’ issues that are usually with emotional content and assist employees to cope with the situations better (Padmasiri & Jayathilake, 2014). Providing all the members access to a free, confidential, workplace counselling service is a growing concern for today’s Organizations, and it is a part of an employer’s duty and care (Hughes, 2015).

There are numerous counselling techniques that organizations use to conduct a productive counselling session namely cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, existential therapy, psychoanalysis, and humanistic therapy, and holistic therapy (Padmasiri & Jayathilake, 2014).

Commonly organizations hire counselling professionals to make this service available at their workplace. But nowadays many Managers are choosing to learn counselling as they believe it is helpful in terms of managing Human resource (Hughes, 2015). Therefore, having a simple knowledge of counseling is important for all the people who deal with human beings.

The Process of Employee Counseling

The process of Employee counseling has the following three steps;

• Rapport Building

At the beginning manager must indicate privacy and confidentiality and demonstrate his or her genuine interest in the employee’s problem. The counselor must actively listen to the feeling and concerns of the employee, in the way that employee feel counselor is really interested in helping him (MBA Knowledge Base, 2021).

• Exploration

While actively listening, the counselor should help employees to find out their own weaknesses and issues via open questions. This would help both parties to discover various dimensions of the situation face by the employee, and the employee will be able to visualize the problem from a different angle. The exploration may provide several alternative causes of a problem (MBA Knowledge Base, 2021).

• Action Planning

After two or three brainstorming sessions Managers will be able to identify the number of alternative ways available for resolving a problem. By analyzing the pros and cons of each alternative should select the best alternative available. The employees should be encouraged to monitor the action plan by themselves and counseling sessions could be monitored and reviewed in a timely manner.

Examples from Global Context

Toyota Industry has given a high priority to enhance employee mental health, by keeping a greater emphasis on better equipping its employees to cope with stress. While adhering to health care strategies promoted by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Toyota industry has taken various preventive and detective measures to ensure the mental wellbeing of their employees. As an example, they have made available stress analyzing tools over the intranet, establish a counseling desk, conduct mental health education sessions for employees, conduct counseling training for managers and supervisors, and provide counseling based on routine checkups (Toyota Industries, 2004).

 Advantages of Counseling

Counseling provides multiple benefits to both managers and subordinates. Education on counseling will help managers to develop their skills in empathy, to demonstrate a more open and transparent manner, to resolve the problems of employees, and to build a closer and trusting relationship among them (Hughes, 2015). On the other hand, employees will be able to learn the alternative ways of resolving their problems, and will get to know how much their employer cares about them. Ultimately this may lead to improve employee satisfaction and productivity (Bishnoi, 2021).

Conclusion

In todays’ turbulent environment, HR counseling plays a crucial role in managing human resources with growing and widely expanded concerns. Typically HR counseling can help employees in their career planning and development, stress management, performance management and when they are at any other emotional issues. Since every manager deal with people little knowledge on counseling will help to achieve far more than expected.

                                                                                                        

Video 1: Employee Counseling

Source: (GreggU, 2019)

References

Bishnoi, P., 2021. Employee Counselling: Meaning, Concept, Types, Benefits and Challenges. [Online]Available at: https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/human-resource-management/employee-counselling/employee-counselling-meaning-concept-types-benefits-and-challenges/31639[Accessed 12 August 2021].

GreggU, 2019. Employee Counseling. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiIH98yS-Ts&ab_channel=GreggU
[Accessed 10 August December].

Hughes, R., 2015. Occupational HEalth and Welbeing Plus- From Personnel Health. [Online]
Available at: https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/workplace-counselling-helps-employees-employers/
[Accessed 8 August 2021].

MBA Knowledge Base, 2021. The Process of Employee Counselling. [Online]
Available at: https://www.mbaknol.com/human-resource-management/the-process-of-employee-counselling/
[Accessed 21 August 2021].

Padmasiri, M. K. & Jayathilake, L. V. K., 2014. A Review of Employee Counselling. [Online]
Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313830970_A_Review_of_Employee_Counselling
[Accessed 12 August 2021].

Toyota Industries, 2004. TOYOTA INDUSTRIES CORPORATION Social & Environmental Report 2004. [Online]
Available at: https://www.toyota-industries.com/csr/reports/items/p47-52.pdf
[Accessed 12 August 2021].

Vantagecircle, 2021. How to Conduct Proper Employee Counseling in the Workplace. [Online]
Available at: How to Conduct Proper Employee Counseling in the Workplace
[Accessed 10 August 2021].