Emotional and Mental Wellness is an essential part of overall Workplace Wellness. It ensures employee productivity, positive workplace morale and helps employees build good workplace relationships. When wellness problems are left unchecked or not detected early enough, it can ultimately lead to a very high staff turnover, decrease productivity and can ultimately impact the company’s bottom line. Workplace counselling offers the ideal platform to deal with emotional, mental health and workplace performance issues. This is Part 3 of The Mindspa Institute’s effort to create awareness of good Mental Health in the Workplace.
Workplace Counsellors are, normally, trained independent specialists with a specific skillset. They are very mindful of the specific work environment of the employees they deal with. They provide both the employee with a safe place to talk about their issues and give them sound advice; and they provide the employer with the comfort that someone is taking care of their employees’ emotional and mental wellness which ultimately benefits the company’s profits.
To give employees access to workplace counselling that is free, confidential, and takes place at the workplace, normally forms part of a business’s Employee Wellness Programme. It also improves performance of employees; thus, many Human Resources Managers are finding counselling skills training extremely helpful. It helps them manage their employees better in terms of performance, team work, training etc. Although HR Managers who equip themselves with counselling skills, might not be able to deal with deep psychological problems, training makes them better equipped to deal with employee performance issues, emotional and mental wellness as well as detect serious problems early on.
Going to the company’s Human Resources Department with an emotional or mental health issue is daunting and employees are afraid that if they disclose too much, they might either be labelled or that they might potentially risk losing their job.
HR Managers who become Workplace Counsellors need to do these 5 things:
- Create a safe place for employees to express emotions, feelings, anxieties etc.
- They need to build trust and secure employee confidentiality.
- Be a sound board for employees. Active listening plays a vital role here.
- They need to be able to detect deeper and more serious problems by getting to the core of the problem.
- They need to keep an open-mind and remain objective.
11 Skills HR Managers need to do Workplace Counselling
- Good communication skills.
- Emotional Intelligencewith a focus on empathy and compassion.
- Interpersonal skills.
- Knowledge and understanding of workplace and human rights laws etc.
- Problem-solving skills.
- Patience and flexibility.
- Being able to care and take a genuine interest in the wellbeing of others.
- Staying objective, authentic and open-minded.
- Accessibility and trustworthiness.
- Rationalising skills to talk through the issues.
- Facilitating change.
The Mindspa Institute offers a Workplace Counselling Skills Short Course either online or in-house which can improve the workplace wellness in the company as well as the overall performance of employees.
8 Benefits of sending your HR Managers on the Workplace counselling training course include:
- Having hands-on staff at no extra cost, helping employees understand and help themselves.
- They are able to then help employees gain new perspective and transform their negative outlook to a positive outlook.
- They are then trained to help employees better solve problems and make better decisions.
- They will be equipped to assist employees deal with their stress and emotional wellbeing.
- It will help HR Managers to detect serious mental health problems early on.
- It will boost the company’s morale, and workplace wellness will increase.
- It will decrease absenteeism and high staff turnover.
- It will boost employee performance and productivity.
Workplace Counselling to boost employee performance and in terms of Mental Health is much specialised and needs to be tackled carefully. In some cases it can become very sensitive and serious and this is why the counsellor needs to be an experienced, skilled and trained person.