Necessity and Process of Counseling at Workplace

Reasons or necessity for Counseling in an Organization:

Given below is a list of situations that call for counseling from a superior to his subordinate, but these are not necessarily the only situations, there may be other situations also as per the necessity:

• When an employee violates the organizations standards.
• When an employee consistently comes late or is absent.
• When an employee’s productivity has come down, or the quality of work is not up to the mark.
• When an employee’s behavior affects the productivity of others employees in a negative way.
• When an employee has conflict with the other employee, or employees and the issue is public and has its affect on productivity and the company.
• When you want to compliment an individual employee.
• When you want to assign a new task to an employee.

How to prepare for a Counseling Interview?

• You need to choose an appropriate, quiet and private location.
• Before proceeding for counseling, make sure that you are not disturbed during the counseling session.
• As a counselor it is your duty to give sufficient time to the person you are counseling and that he is not being rushed into it.

Objectives of the Counseling Interview:

• Counselor should help the person being counseled to:
• Open up and discuss his problem.
• Look out for new perspectives.
• Clarify the issues.
• Identify areas that require change.
• Set goals.
• Develop action plan to reach the goals.
• Review progress as to how far he is able to achieve his goals.

Counselor should extend complete support during the interview and also after the interview to implement the action plan and to review the progress.

Counseling Skills

• Counselor should listen carefully.
• Counselor should demonstrate empathy.
• Counselor should not make judgments.
• Counselor should understand emotions/feelings of the person being counseled.
• Counselor should question with care.
• Counselor should ask open ended questions.
• Counselor should reflect back, summarize and paraphrase so that understanding becomes easy.
• Counselor should use appropriate body language.
• Counselor should not show superiority.

Techniques of Counseling: (Based on Rogers, Carkheff and Patterson's model)

• Structure
• Listen (active and empathic)
• Be silent (when required)
• Respond
• Reflect
• Question
• Interpret

Limitations in Counseling:

• Person being counseled may not trust in his counselor (usually, his superior) or other person from the organization.
• Usually the person being counseled has suspicion, on the level of confidentiality.
• There is a possibility of constraints, from organizations side, on using its resources, time and efforts.
• It is also possible that the counselor is unskilled.

Benefits of Counseling:

• The process of counseling helps the person being counseled to understand himself.
• The process of counseling allows the individual to help himself.
• The process of counseling helps in understanding the situations more objectively.
• The process of counseling facilitates to look at the situations from a new perspective.
• The process of counseling develops positive outlook.
• The process of counseling paves way to look for alternate solutions to problems.
• The process of counseling helps in better decision making.
• The process of counseling gives scope to the person to cope with the situation and the concerned stresses.

If one follows this approach for counseling, the results will be great, and the objective of counseling would be achieved.