Introduction to Employee Counseling
Introduction to Employee Counseling
Human resource management was not a very popular discipline in the earlier part of the last century. Managers at that time viewed labor force as a commodity to be bought or sold like any other commodity. This type of management was probably effective at its time. But it proved to be short lived, which is evident from the ever-increasing importance of what, is now called “Human Resource Management”.
Human Resource Management is the part of the organization that is concerned with ‘the people’ dimension, consisting of staff support and function in the organization. Every organization is comprised of people (Hoque, 2000:17) and deals with acquiring their services, developing their skills, motivating them to high levels of performance. Getting and keeping good people is critical to the success of every organization.
One important aspect of human resource management is to continuously monitor and maintain employee performance. Improving employee performance is important both to the employee themselves and to the organization. It makes sense to have a healthy high performing work force as not only does it create happier individuals who provide quality service but also their contribution to drive and achieve set organizational objectives.
Workplace Counseling may focus on work performance but its emphasis is more on a problem solving approach, which is concerned with the discussion and analysis of problems and issues that affect an employees work performance in an attempt to find solutions. There seems to be an ever-increasing importance could it be because mangers have suddenly woken up to the fact that it helps to retain valuable employees, or because people are more prone to problems than ever before. The correct answer would be a combination of both. In the face of increasing employee turnover and escalating recruitment/training costs, many managers find counseling a better alternative to retain troubled employees by helping them resolve problems.
Counseling is also used for other potential problem areas in an organization such as career planning and development or to help employees prepare for implementing changes such as retirement, changes caused by health, stress, conflict etc.
Work and careers are important aspects of society and we live in a society where rate of change appears to be accelerating. Career counseling helps people of all ages to make appropriate and realistic career choices....