Employee Counseling: Concepts and Applications

Counseling represents a set of skills and techniques to help people understand, manage and solve their problems, which manifest as worry, anxiety, stress, etc. In counseling, there is a person with a problem (the counselee) and a person who helps (the counselor). Employee counseling applies the concept of counseling to the work environment, to help employees with their work-related and personal problems, which affect performance on the job. While earlier, employee counseling was meant to be a step that preceded disciplinary action, nowadays, it has become a welfare measure for helping troubled employees. This book begins by providing a glimpse into the history, evolution and present status of employee counseling. Thereafter, it covers various facets of counseling such as the concept of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), integration of employee counseling as part of the HRM function, different models and methods of employee counseling and the role of counseling in performance management. It also looks into several situation-specific applications of counseling, such as counseling during times of crisis, organizational change and downsizing, counseling older employees, financial counseling, counseling to handle stress and counseling for BPO employees. The cases at the end help to bring out the practical dimensions of the subject in greater detail. Over the past decade, increased competition and rapid pace of economic development have led to higher stress on the job, thereby enhancing the need for counseling. Effective employee counseling is a win-win route for employers as well as employees. From an employee s point of view, counseling symbolizes fair treatment, and for the employer, it helps in improving employees’ productivity on the job.