Chris Ball
Switched-on managements who know that stress and poor performance are bedfellows are bringing in outside industrial agony aunts to counsel employees.
Up to 25% of all United States staff are now covered by so-called employee assistance programmes (EAPs). In Britain, the schemes only cover about 6% or 1,3-million of the working population so far. But they are mushrooming.
A veritable industry has emerged, offering work to clinical psychologists, debt counsellors, solicitors and money advisers.
But what do these workers’ Samaritans do for their money? Research funded by the British Health and Safety Executive says that EAPs are often helpful to workers with domestic problems, but do not go far enough in solving their workplace ones.
The research, conducted by Carolyn Highley-Marchington and Professor Cary Coope, says that EAPs can teach individuals to cope with organisational stress, but they frequently fail to address the underlying reason for the stress, which is often bad management. And many companies, it says, use EAPs to give their company a caring image.
The research expresses concern about some of the counsellors’ lack of training. Only a minority of counsellors are professionally qualified beyond their counselling training, and up to 20% have been recruited without qualifications and/or experience.
A third of requests for help fall into the category of “emotional problems”, and roughly one- fifth each are described as “work related”, “marital or family problems”, and “financial or legal”. Smaller numbers are connected with alcohol or drug abuse.
With 80-million British working days being lost each year through mental illness, there are major problems needing to be addressed and talking alone will not do.
ENDS