R BABU
INTRODUCATION
MBA 2ND YEAR HRD
REG. NO. 12200181025
1. Today the latest trend in Corporate HR world is “Employee Counselling at Workplace”. This trend
has been imported from the United States to India.
2. In this competition world there are de-stressed employees in each and every organization. It’s
difficult to find a tension free employee in an organization.
3. Organization’s has started Counselling at Workplace to retain the current employees, the talented
employees, to increase the productivity and this is one of the way to motivate their employee.
4. Counselling is conducted by the employer and at the cost of employer, its free for employees. Many
organizations have now started employee counselling at their workplace and making it as a part of
their organization.
5. Organization hires a professional as a counsellor or keeps a part time counsellor or selects a senior
person from company for counselling.
MEANING
1. Employees face lots of problems in day to day life, they may have problem with their
subordinates, colleagues, system of the work or may have problem in personal life.
2. This problem starts affecting their work, their career and their performance in job.
Counselling is like giving advice, sorting out the problems of employees, guiding and
helping them for the problem they face in office or in personal life.
3. Employee counselling is done to bring out a positive result from the de-stressed employee.
In simple terms employee counselling is like a stressed person discuss about the problem or
about the poor performance and other person consoles and try to sort the problem.
DEFINITION
According to Keith Davis – Employee counselling involves a discussion of an
emotional problem with an employee with the general objective of decreasing
it.
This definition has three concept:
(i) Counselling deals with emotional problems.
(ii) Counselling involves discussion i.e., it is an act of communication. Successful
counselling depends on communication skills, primarily face- to-face, by which one
person’s emotions can be shared with another.
(iii) The general objective of counselling is to understand and/or decrease an
employee’s emotional disorder. If two individuals merely discuss an emotional
problem of either of them, a social relationship may be established, but hardly a
counselling one, because intent is not there. For counselling to exist, an employee
must be seeking an understanding or help and/or the other (known as counsellor)
must be offering it.
Why counselling at workplace?
1. Employees face through the stress of completing the targets, work-load, meeting deadlines,
relations with subordinates or colleagues, work-life balance, lack of time and higher
responsibility.
2. Counselling helps the employees to come out from the problems, gives a new way to deal
with the problems. Counselling shows how much the employer care for the employee.
3. Counselling may help to identify the employee the work related problems and the poor
performance.
OBJECTIVES
Objectives of Employee Counselling:
The objectives of counselling could be stated as follows:
(i) Counselling is an exchange of ideas and feelings between two persons.
(ii) It is concerned with both personal and work problems.
(iii) Counselling may be performed by both professionals and non-
professionals.
(iv) Counselling is usually confidential so as to have free talk and discussion.
(v) It tries to improve organisational performance by helping the employees
to cope with their problems.
The three basic ingredients of the process are:
i. Communication
ii. Empowering, and
iii. Helping.
Communication involves receiving messages (listening), giving messages
(responding), and giving feedback. The counsellor or the mentor does all
these.
The process of empowering enables the other person to exercise more
autonomy, providing positive reinforcement so that the desirable behaviour
is further strengthened and creates conditions in which the person is able to
learn from the behaviour of the mentor.
Finally, helping primarily involves identification of the developmental
needs of the person being counselled so that he/she may be able to develop
and increase his/her effectiveness.
BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE COUNSELLING
1. Helps employees to tackle with the problems effectively
2. Employees are able to sort their problems
3. Helps in decision making
4. A new way to look at the perspective.
5. May reduce the number of absenteeism of employee
6. It may prevent termination from employer or resignation
from employee.
7. It reduces the cost of hiring new employee and training new staff.
8. Possibility of smooth coordination between employer and employee.
CHALLENGES
Challenges to Effective Employee Counselling:
(i) Employees are not comfortable sharing their problems with
manager/counsellor.
(ii) Lack of trust in counselling procedure.
(iii) Providing counselling to employees is a time-consuming and costly
process.
(iv) The very purpose of counselling is defeated if the counsellor is
ineffective.
Employee counselling can go a long way in helping employees face their
day-to-day problems more effectively and deal with stress in a better
manner. It helps them to take increased control over their job and life and
maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life.
