Exploration of the attitudes of employees towards the provision of counselling within a profit-making organisation

The provision of workplace counselling has risen significantly over the last 20 years in response to the increase in stress-related illness amongst employees in UK profit-making organisations. Despite this expansion there is very little exploration of employee attitudes towards this provision. This paper describes a case study of employee attitudes towards counselling in a UK profit-making organisation utilising an Employee Assistant Programme (EAP) for staff counselling. The method used for the research was a quantitative approach administered using a short questionnaire distributed to employees by e-mail. The responses to the questionnaire illustrated that most employees were highly aware of the service and believed stress to be the highest presenting issue to the EAP counsellors. However, stress was actually the lowest presenting issue. The results from this study also suggested that managers had a more negative attitude towards counselling than non-managers. Men and women were found to have the same highly positive attitude towards counselling. Respondents felt that wider, constant and regular positive promotion of counselling, by the employer as well as the EAP, was needed to increase utilisation of the EAP counselling service. Concerns over confidentiality for those using, or contemplating using, the service were also found — as in other studies — but this study found concerns particularly in relation to managers finding out that an employee had attended counselling. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Key words:

• attitudes
• awareness
• EAP
• gender
• management
• stress
• workplace counselling