Counselling in the Workplace?
I like my car.
Climate control, electrically operated seats (and heated- ah bliss), and a state of the art, computer controlled high performance engine that can hurl it from 0-60 in less time than it takes a policeman to turn on his blue light and get there too (‘honestly officer, I was only researching for an article…’). Yet for all this sophistication, it has still got something even my grandad’s old car had when I was a kid - a red line on the rev counter. Why? It’s a warning that if I drive the sophisticated engine that hard for very long it will do something very unsophisticated.
It will blow a gasket.
This engineering slant on things is interesting. After all, a great many of the words we now use to apply to people were originally engineering or scientific terms. A couple of generations ago, ‘stress’ was what happened to girders in bridges and ‘pressure’ measured the atmosphere. Atmosphere ‘under pressure’ has miles of air above it- in other words you can see the cause of most physical effects. But with people it’s different. People in the workplace are ‘under pressure’. We have learned to apply an old language, the language of physics, or engineering, in a new way-and we might well have never stopped to think that much about it.
Rather like physicists, in the business world we are accustomed to attributing effects to causes-increased productivity and higher profits don’t just happen-we make them happen. But why should we think that negative phenomena amongst staff in the workplace ‘just happen’?
But let’s go back to my car for a moment. If that gasket blows its inconvenient-but there’s worse.
Its expensive.
Everyone has their own internal ‘red line’. Staff in whom time and money has been invested, can (for all sorts of reasons-some work related, some not) suffer the negative effects of stress and sooner or later (usually sooner), performance suffers. Apart from the human cost, the economic consequences are far more expensive for businesses than my car’s blown gasket.
Approaching stress as an unwelcome source of lost productivity is perhaps helpful because it takes away the ‘soft and fuzzy’ side of seeing the relevance of facilitating appropriate professional intervention for stressed employees. After all, my car is very well made but if it isn’t maintained it’s a costly thing. The fact that it needs a trained person to attend to things that get worn as the miles clock up is no sign of poor design (hey, it’s a Volvo). On the other hand, even the most careful driver needs a mechanic sometimes-so it doesn’t mean that as employers we have somehow ‘failed’ our staff. It just comes with the territory.
People, too, when needing some help dealing with their own stressors can be some of our best, most valuable, most committed staff (maybe that’s why they take themselves to that red line?) There’s nothing ‘wrong with them’. On the other hand, there are those who cannot break out of destructive attitudes and behaviours. But wherever we might think the cause lies, the cost can be the same.
All analogies break down at some point. Here we must leave my car-because I can tell when it needs the involvement of an external professional. But there is no clear cut line to show when employee behaviour moves from something to be addressed through performance management to a requirement for outside counselling. For example, how does a manager differentiate between someone who requires training, support, or coaching, from someone whose reduced performance is not itself the problem, but actually a symptom of another underlying problem-possibly rooted outside the workplace where the manager cannot exercise any influence?
Perhaps one way to approach this is to accept that if performance management paths do not result in positive changes, then another angle could be tried. One angle is the external counselling path.
The aim of counselling is to provide the employee as the client, and the employer as the referring agency, with the opportunity to optimise workplace performance. Counselling is not ‘giving advice’ or ‘telling people what to do’. It makes no assumption that either the subject or the employer has ‘failed’. It involves assessing behaviours, enabling clients to gain insight into their attitudes, attendant actions and consequences. It seeks to facilitate the exploration of behavioural change. It may involve cognitive restructuring training (strategies for thinking differently) or techniques for stress management, or address alcohol or drug misuse. Social skills training, handling conflict, assertive behaviour, bereavement counselling or other such personal issues may be indicated.
It is a responsible step by an employer to offer an employee counselling. It is also a brave step because counselling is never a guarantee of change in the counsellee. Responsibility for change in any aspect of life, including workplace behaviours fall to that employee. Counselling cannot make the counsellee change, unless they are prepared to take the responsibility for this. To respect that investment in the employee, in addition to the counsellor making every effort to provide high standards of professional help, the counsellee should also be expected to engage responsibly in the change process. Only in that way can workplace based problems be resolved through counselling.
As we monitor our staff’s performance, sometimes we aren’t sure what to do for the best-and sometimes it may be best to refer the employee outside the organization. But I have to sign off here-I’ve just remembered something important.
Just off to check the oil in my car….
Our counselling service helps employees with:
- Anger Management
- Stress Management
- Handling Conflict
- Assertive Behaviour
- Bereavement Counselling
- Personal Issues
Written by Martin Bullivant
