Corporate Counseling for Team Development

Only a few people can find it easy to strike the right balance between home demands, personal care, and work responsibilities. Most fail at it and are either lacking one of the fronts or sometimes on all of them.

In their work, it is bound to happen that some of the employees may feel demotivated or stressed or may bring their problems to work, affecting their overall performance. It is neither unprofessional nor abnormal for this to happen and is natural.

Corporate counseling is a valuable H.R. service that a corporation can offer to its most important stakeholders – employees. These are the people working day-in and day-out to make the enterprise a successful business and the best in the class.

Once, as a corporate leader and H.R. manager, you realize that employees are all humans with feelings and emotions and may have the same flaws as anyone. Despite all these factors, they are still striving hard to bring you the best results.

Reasons to opt for Corporate Counseling Services

There are many reasons for workplace stress or the falling performance of a large number of employees at any office. Some of them have origins solely at the workplace, some at home, some related to personal health, and others having a mix of all these. Listed below are a few such reasons:

• Workplace Reasons

• • Job dissatisfaction leading to decreased motivation
  • Unrealistic and unattainable performance and delivery targets (due to many reasons)
  • Regular conflicts with seniors, juniors, or colleagues
  • Team pressures and office politics (real or perceived)
  • New team or management
  • Challenging role
  • Long office hours
  • Competition
  • Workplace Harassment and bullying
• Physical, Mental and Emotional Health-related Reasons
  • Stress
  • Anxieties, fears, depression
  • Over aggression or anger-management issues
  • Lack of self-confidence
  • Poor time management skills
  • Loss of enthusiasm at work
  • Fatigue
  • Lack of concentration
  • Severe and chronic physical ailments or accidents

• Training or Education Related Reasons
  • Lack of organizational skills
  • Lack of people’s management skills
  • Wrong communication skills
  • Lack of Problem-solving skills
  • Careless mistakes
• Family, Home, and Personal Reasons
  • Awry Work-life balance
  • Familial & relationship issues
  • Financial stress
  • Goal and career confusions

Counselling and life coaching are increasingly deployed as preferred tools by organizations to sustain, support, and appreciate an effective and motivated workforce’s efforts. Corporate counseling aims to take care of employees’ mental and emotional health and well-being so that with self-awareness, they turn into better humans, useful employees, and star performers at what they do.

It has been recorded in many studies that Employee Assistance Programmes (E.A.P.s) and counseling results intangible and real benefits for companies and their clients. It leads to better client response, effective service delivery, and lesser conflicts at the workplace, resulting in enhance coordination.

Life Coaching and Counseling are not an exact science because corporate counsellors work with humans with emotions, and everyone is a unique test case. It is an art that needs constant practice and intuitive instincts in the counselor. It is a science-based on proven research and studies in psychology, human resources management, sociology, and neurosciences.

In counseling, two or more people engage in an aiding and supportive relationship where the counselor is a certified, trained, and experienced helper. The other(s) are her/his client(s) who are seeking help. The purpose of this short and result-oriented relationship is to help the clients to identify the issues ailing them, find their reasons, and help them solve these issues using scientific tools, techniques, and processes.

It also helps line and H.R. managers identify the training needs, shortlist candidates, work a feasible training plan, get feedback, and evaluate training outcomes in line with overall corporate objectives. Life coach and corporate counsellors can conduct their training for team building, taking on leadership roles, conflict resolution, negotiation skills, anger management, and productivity enhancement.

4. Performance appraisal and Promotions: Some employees may take the semi-annual and annual as a way for the managers to get back at them for not toeing the line or being outspoken and honest. Managers always are not so objective themselves, and being human is driven by emotions themselves. Though there exist many tools and methods for ensuring accurate and fair appraisal of one’s performance, they still have to rely on many subjective elements.

Counselors have developed many methods for objectively appraising an individual’s performance that highlights their output in KRA or Key Result Areas. Corporate counsellor also plays a key role while breaking the news of promotions to critical positions, inducting a new person for a senior role, and making recommendations for Increments or transfers.

5. Grooming Leadership: A leader needs to be a go-getter, an inspiration for the team, a role model and must have impeccable interpersonal skills. Their attitude towards the employees on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder build their image, says Life Coach and a Corporate Counsellor.

She shares corporates’ primary concern is the lack of potential leaders in their second and third generation of employees who will eventually replace the current leadership. She won Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2011” for Leaders of Tomorrow Awards by ET Now Pan India and also provides counseling to young entrepreneurs for their future endeavors. Corporate counseling and coaching can enable the executives to realize their potentials and become leaders in their own right.

6. Change Management: As said before, change is challenging for many employees. But in a dynamic corporate world, the difference is the only constant and can be significant in its impact. There can be mergers, acquisitions, entering new management, entering a new market, economic cycles, layoffs, retrenchments, liquidations, and many more potential events causing upheavals.

Sometimes the speed and the intensity are so powerful that they can be dizzying. Employee counselling comes handy in such situations. Employees with psychological tools and methods to help them stay focused, calm, and behave balanced will perform and shine even in the toughest and tumultuous times.

7. Dealing with Severance and Layoffs: Probably, one of the most critical roles of the corporate counsellor is when there are mass layoffs and retrenchments due to economic downturn and unprofitable business. The sudden loss of income and job-security can fill the departing employees and the remaining employees with despair, angst, and fear. She has worked with such situations, and H.R. managers have said that employees handled themselves better after her coaching sessions. Even the laid employees were more confident than the others and soon found a good job in another company.

8. Improving Work Environment: A right work environment results in lively, cheerful, and more productive employees. To give their best at the workplace, especially in the modern knowledge-driven market space, must provide merit promoting, innovative, and smart environments. Usual bickering, politicking, and back-stabbing may not work in the long-run. She helped many corporations to identify the bad to worse work conditions in their offices and offered concrete yet simple solutions to minimize the friction and improve coordination. The work environment also includes the physical world and its conditions like humidity, temperature, lighting, ventilation, and working hours.

9. Work-life Balance: The H.R. managers must provide the maximum possible and optimal work-life balance to their employees. One has to accept that stress is a part of our lives, affecting our work-life balance. A corporate counsellor can help management realize its importance and employees to have a little laid-back attitude.

Other Benefits of Corporate Counselling include:

• It facilitates clients to objectively assess them, build on their strengths, and manage your weaknesses or expectations.
• Elements of personality development like decision making, effective communication, soft skills training, etiquette training, and time management can be significantly improved.
• It helps in reducing absenteeism and improving staff retention at workplaces.

Tools and Methods Employed

A Life coach and counselor says that to explore and benefit from employees’ skills and potential, their performance counseling can be beneficial. For counseling, here are some essential skills and tools:

1. Goal setting using S.M.A.R.T. goals
2. Open Communication
3. Active listening
4. Being positive and smiling
5. Asking questions and responding
6. Being empathetic
7. Providing positive reinforcement
8. Regular follow-up and active feedbag

Corporate Counsellor and Coach 

Corporate counselors have to deal with many people and generally have limited time on their hands. As each employee may have different baggage, great care is needed.