Employee Counseling Needs: The Influence of Personal Correlates

In recent times, the need of counseling services has become essential for improving the wellbeing of the employees in organizations. Understanding various kinds of problems experienced in work and family situations would really help to provide better counseling services to employees. Personal problems that include emotional or behavioral issues like marital, family or work problems relates to the employee's attitude, motivation or interpersonal skills were addressed through counseling in various work settings. Problems related to work behavior may include, Poor relations with colleagues or customers, Becoming withdrawn from colleagues, Tensions and conflict in workplace relationships, Loss of motivation and commitment, Increased sickness and absence, Poor time keeping, Increased errors or accidents, Emotional outbursts, Deterioration in personal standards etc. The present study examines the nature of employee counseling needs and find out the influence of personal factors on them. The employee counseling needs are categorized into work, personal, group, health, and economic and psychological types. The results indicate significant types counseling needs were observed among the younger, less experienced and less educated employees. The implications of the findings for minimizing the problems experienced by employees are suggested.