Employee Counseling is the most important tool of a supervisor who wants to improve employee performance and behavior. If performance problems persist even after feedback, one may need to proceed to counselling.
Counseling focuses on the employee problems, and is positive and constructive. Counseling is a formal, straightforward face-to-face conversation between a supervisor and an employee about behavior and performance. This is an effective way for a supervisor to have a positive effect on employee performance.
Employee Counseling
Employee counseling is based on the premise that employee performance can be improved if the employee is properly advised by skilled managers. Employee counseling is defined as the task of helping poor or underperforming employees improve and therefore it is vital to have an effective and well-documented counseling for two important reasons- Firstly to improve performance and secondly to serve as support and possible evidence for the next completion if the employee fails to improve.
Employee counseling is a way to understand and help people who have technical, personal and emotional adjustment problems interfering with their work performance. It is a vital part of performance review and potential appraisal.
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6 Steps to Effective Employee Counseling
1. Advice
Many people view counseling as primarily an advice-giving activity, but in reality this is only one of several steps that counseling can perform. To give useful advice requires is counselor to make judgements about a counselee’s problems and to lay out a course action. counseling may breed a relationship in which the counselee feels inferior and dependent on the counselor. Despite all the illness, advice occurs in routine counseling because workers expect it and managers like to provide it.
2. Reassurance
The second step of employee counseling is reassurance. It is a method of giving them courage to face a problem or a feeling of confidence that they are pursuing a suitable course of action. Reassurance is represented by such counselor as “Your are making good progress, Ena,” and “Don’t worry; this will come out all right.”
Read more: Best Three Types of Counseling Process
3. Communication
Counseling can improve both upward and downward communication. In an upward direction, it is a key way for employees to express their feelings to management. Counseling also achieves downward communication because counselors help interpret company activities to employees as they discuss problems related to them.
4. Release of Emotional Tension
An important step of employee counseling is release of emotional tension; this release is sometimes called emotional catharsis. Whenever people get a chance to tell someone about them, they get emotional relief from their frustration and other problems. Counseling history consistently shows that as people begin to explain their problems to a sympathetic listener, their tensions begin ton subside. They are more relaxed, and their speech is more coherent and rational.
5) Clarified Thinking
Another step of counselling is that of clarified thinking. To clarify the counselor’s thoughts, the counselor acts only as an aid and refrains from telling the counselor what is right. The result of any clarified thinking is that a person is encouraged to accept responsibility for mental problems and to be more realistic in solving them.
6. Reorientation
Reorientation is more than just emotional release or clear thinking about a problem. It involves a change in the employee’s psychic self through a change in basic goals and values. For example, it can help people recognize and accept their own weaknesses. It is largely a job for professional counselors who know its uses and limitations and who have the necessary training. The manager’s job is to recognize those in need of reorientation before their need becomes severe, so that they can referred to professional help in time for successful treatment.
