Perceptions and experiences of affiliates on employee counselling: an employee assistance programme perspective

Abstract

Services rendered by employee assistance programmes (EAPs) in organisations provide resolutions to employees’ personal problems that impact their performance at work and enable employees to reach their full potential beneficial to both the employee and their employer. The benefits of the EAP involve, healthy employees spending less on health care, taking fewer sick leaves, showing more productivity and greater performance. The primary aim of this study is to explore the experiences of affiliates on the roll-out of employee counselling and how they perceive their treatment and or conditions of the programme in the workplace. The objectives of the study were; to describe the external model of EAP, to explore affiliates’ experiences on employee counselling and explain how the service is rendered, to explore and describe the roles played by affiliates when conducting EAP individual counselling, to explore the views of affiliates on the strengths and weaknesses of EAP individual counselling. The study was qualitative and used a case study as the research design. The population of the study was affiliates, registered to practice in South Africa with over 3 years of work experience. A sample of 10-15 affiliates was selected using purposive sampling. The collection of data was completed over a semi-structured interview schedule and face to face interviews and data was analyzed through thematic content analysis. The findings of this study presented that employee counselling benefits both employees and organisations and the execution of the programme vary from one company to the other. Additionally, affiliates are faced with numerous challenges while providing counselling to employees as well as successes such as reduced absenteeism, high motivation, increased productivity, and increased concentration. However, there is still a need for effective management strategies to manage challenges experienced within the external model of EAP