In today's fast-paced and competitive economy, organisations increasingly recognise the profound impact of employee health on overall organisational growth. The connection between a healthy workforce and long-term business sustainability has become evident. While companies recognise that physical fitness is essential to productivity at work, they have also begun to recognise the relationship between employees' mental wellness and organisation growth. Successful companies like Google and Apple include personal therapy in their employees' benefits.
Employees face many stressors in the modern work environment, including heavy workloads, tight deadlines, and interpersonal conflicts. These stressors can affect mental health, decreasing productivity, burnout, and turnover. While Human Resources has been providing employee counselling for decades, there is a limitation to the support that human resources can give directly. Some employees feel vulnerable to the Human Resource personnel for fear that their disclosure and vulnerability may profoundly affect the opportunity for promotion and salary increment. Therefore, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is a crucial company intervention. As an external vendor, EAP offers employees a safe space to address their concerns and challenges through counselling. Organisations who engage counselling centres to provide EAP demonstrate their commitment to the holistic well-being of their workforce. Employees who receive the necessary support to manage stress and cope with challenges are better equipped to contribute effectively to the organisation's growth.
Employee counselling under the scope of EAP may include work-related issues such as burnout, procrastination, harassment and performance enhancement. Processing work-related problems with an external party is helpful because the employees will see it more as a support than a corrective intervention. Employee counselling may also include psychological and mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and relationship issues. When the employees receive support to process their mental health or relationship challenges, they will likely have better mental capacity to focus on their work, thus ensuring the organisation's continuous productivity.
There are benefits to employee counselling. Improved mental wellness translates to reduced absenteeism, enhanced job satisfaction, and increased employee engagement. When employees feel valued and supported, they are more likely to invest their skills and energy into their roles, thus fostering organisational growth. Counselling promotes open communication, nurturing a positive work culture that encourages collaboration and innovation.
A healthy and motivated workforce is crucial to the organisation's capacity to thrive in these economic challenges. A workplace that supports the employee's mental wellness demonstrates ethical leadership and a commitment to safeguarding employees' mental well-being, leading to better employee satisfaction, which fosters productivity and organisational success.
Restoring Peace is a private mental health centre which provides counselling and psychotherapy services for individuals and families. We also offer counselling and psychotherapy services through the Employee Assistance programme (EAP) by partnering with worldwide EAP organisations and working directly with Singapore-based companies. Our clinicians counsel a variety of cases, including adjustment disorder, anxiety, burnout, depression, performance enhancement, procrastination, trauma, grief, transition to a new country and various mental health and relationship challenges. Our clients come from diverse ethnic, social, cultural and religious backgrounds. For more information, please visit www.restoringpeace.com.sg or WhatsApp at +65 8889 1848. For periodic updates, we invite you to join our telegram group, https://t.me/restoringpeace.
Keywords: employees, workplace, EAP, organisation, career, counselling, job, satisfaction, mental wellbeing, productivity, success, burnout, adjustment.
Sources:
https://medium.com/@ednaomol/counselling-in-the-workplace-its-necessity-44fc1cb97aa7
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