Occupational Health Employee Counselling and Well-being

01/09/2015

We all experience life-crisis issues at different stages in our lives. Experiences such as bereavement and loss, relationship and family difficulties, substance misuse (including alcohol issues) and stresses at home can all preoccupy someone’s thinking and distract them from work. 

In its 2009 report, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) argued the business case for promoting mental well-being at work, stating: 'Positive steps to improve the management of mental health in the workplace, including prevention and early identification of problems, could result in cost savings of 30 percent. In an organisation with 1,000 employees, this is equivalent to cost savings of £250,607 per year’. A 2012 Cambridge University study showed clearly that the effect of time-limited counselling (an average of seven sessions) on distressed clients is positive. Evidence drawn from a sizeable treatment group suggested that such counselling leads to an increased sense of well-being.

While counselling is available on the NHS, the long waiting times, lack of specialist insight and inflexibility of appointment times and locations make workplace counselling a more attractive option to many employers and employees.

Obtaining meaningful management information data back from an employee counselling service is important to allow employers to evaluate the benefits of any occupational health counselling service

Healthwork Advice and Discussion

Healthwork has a very well developed employee counselling service.  In recent months, we have consolidated this by the appointment of a Lead Counsellor and by the development of additional mental health support services such as group therapies and bespoke training packages for managers/employees.  

To add additional value to the services we provide  we recognise the importance of collecting meaningful data and how this data can be used.  We have developed a new data collection system which is a more robust method to review client progress and clients’ experiences of the services . Furthermore this data can also be used to assist staff in maintaining and developing their health and psychological well-being and advise managers on managing health issues in the workplace. From an employer’s perspective the rationale for providing staff counselling is likely to improve psychological well-being, performance and attendance. 

The data we provide can also be used to capture ‘impact and value’ 

  • Both the employer and the service should be aware of how many staff are using the service, their demographic details and  the issues they are presenting. This data can then be used to highlight any issue that needs to be addressed organisationally
  • Routine monitoring of this data can be fed into the development of the service 
  • In reviewing impact and value our waiting times are 3 days to a first appointment average across the year, compared to 63 days for Primary Care Services (CORE 2011)
  • We will be monitoring Anxiety, Depression, Ability to function, Trauma, Presenteeism, Work engagement, Life satisfaction,      Workplace distress and Absenteeism 

Please contact Healthwork if you would like further information on our counselling services.