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. Counselling 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 behaviour 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 organisation can either take the help of experienced employees or expert, professional counselor to take up the counselling activities. Increasing complexities in the lives of the employees need to address various aspects like:

Performance counseling: Ideally, the need for employee counselling arises when the employee shows signs of declining performance, being stressed in officehours, bad decision-making etc. In such situations, counselling 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, et al. 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, counselling sessions involving their families can help to resolve their problems and getting them back to work- all fresh and enthusiastic. 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 counselling 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. Counselling 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. Counselling at workplace is a way of the organisation to care about its employees. Hurdles faced for counseling at workplace The biggest bottleneck in employee counselling at the workplace is the lack of trust on the employee's part to believe in the organisation or his superior to share and understand

his problems. Also, the confidentiality that the counselor won't disclose his personal problems or issues to others in the organisation. Time, effort and resources required on the part of the organisation are a constraint. Benefits of counselling

Helping the individual to understand and help himself Understand the situations and look at them with a new perspective and positive outlook Helping in better decision making Alternate solutions to problems Coping with the situation and the stress

Basic requisites of employee counselling

Employee Counselling needs to be tackled carefully, both on the part of the organisation and the counselor. The counselling can turn into a sensitive series of events for the employee and the organisation; therefore, the counselor should be either a professional or an experienced, mature employee. 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. Active and effective listening is one of the most important aspects of the employee counselling. Time should not be a constraint in the process. The counselor should be able to identify the problem and offer concrete advice. 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.

Conclusion: Counselling can go a long way in helping the employees to have better control over their lives, take their decisions wisely and better charge of their responsibilities, reduce the level of stress and anxiety. Counselling of employees can have desirable consequences for the organisation. It helps the organisation when the employees know that the organization cares for them, and build a sense of commitment with it. It can prove to be of significant help to modify the behaviour of the employees and more so to re-enforce the desired behaviour and improve and increase the employee productivity. *********************************************************************** * Staff members with problems may take more time off work for sicknesses that are either real or imagined. Many may suffer from stress related illnesses like high blood pressure

or ulcers. This is expensive for the organisation both from the viewpoint of the cost of the treatment and the cost of the time away from the job. Remaining staff members also suffer since they will have to do additional work to cover for the member who is away. This impacts on their productivity and lowers their morale. Others may agitate for job or career changes within the organisation because the problems make them unable to cope with their work. They may even decide to leave their job and this will create difficulties as new people will have to be found, recruited, inducted and trained to replace them. This is an expensive and time-consuming exercise for an organisation. For employees who are in customer care situations their personal difficulties will impact on the customers they serve. Their organisation may lose business as a result of their problems. Customers who are badly treated initially quickly escalate to becoming problem customers who take a great deal of the organisation's time and senior management intervention before they can be soothed. Bosses with difficulties will impact on the staff they supervise. Each staff member may lose productivity even though they are ordinarily productive because they are hurting from the way their boss treats them The boss's decisions will be clouded with the personal issues and the organisation may lose money or customers as a result. Expensive mistakes may be made. Modern business methods call for people to do a great deal of work as part of a team or a project group. When the members of the team don't interact well because of their personal issues, the work of the team or the project will suffer. They may also be issues related specifically to the work place, such as matters like career development, discipline, performance, relating to customers or clients, promotion, redeployment, transfers, redundancies, retirement, etc. There might be problems individuals have in relating to others in the work place, either as individuals or as part of a team. Other problems may lie in relating to customers, to bosses or to those in authority in general. Bosses might also have problems in relating to their juniors.