Your how-to: Developing role-specific counselling and support guidelines in the workplace
Developing role-specific counselling and support guidelines in the workplace' refers to the process of creating a structured framework tailored to each specific job role within an organisation. This framework is aimed at providing counselling and mental health support relevant to the unique stressors, responsibilities, and challenges associated with each role.
In the Australian context, this involves creating these guidelines in line with the Australian Standard on Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Safe Work Australia guidelines, ensuring safe and healthy working conditions conducive to the mental wellbeing of employees.
Consequently, these guidelines include a variety of factors including ways to identify signs of mental health issues, protocols for reporting and addressing these issues, and resources for offering support and counselling. This targeted approach ensures that the mental health needs of employees in different roles are adequately addressed, enhancing overall employee wellbeing and workforce productivity.
Step by step instructions
Identify Job Roles and their Specific Stressors: Begin by comprehensively identifying each job role in your establishment. For each role, pinpoint the unique stressors, responsibilities and challenges those engaged in such positions may encounter. This will require in-depth understanding of each role and, where necessary, conversations with incumbents could provide invaluable insights.
Develop Protocols for Identifying Mental Health Issues: Design procedures that help identify signs of mental health problems specifically related to each job role. Further, it can also be helpful to provide training to managers and colleagues to help them spot these indications in coworkers.
Provide Resources for Support and Counselling: Tailor resources and counselling support in a way that they address the mental health stressors identified for each specific job role. You may need to engage professionals to provide this support, or provide training to internal staff members. It would be beneficial to have multiple avenues for support, ranging from face to face counselling, group support sessions or digital platforms.
Review the Guidelines Regularly: Make it a part of your company's culture to regularly review these guidelines so they stay updated as job roles might evolve with time. Provide spaces for employees to suggest improvements or express concerns, always maintaining the ethos of continuous evolution.
Be Aware of Regulatory Frameworks: A thorough understanding of the Australian Standard on Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, Fair Work Act 2009 and the Safe Work Australia guidelines is imperative. These legislations ensure safe and healthy working conditions conducive to the mental wellbeing of employees. Draw out the implications of these standards as they pertain to each job role.
Establish Reporting and Intervention Mechanism: Create clear reporting mechanisms for mental health concerns. Ensure anonymity to encourage more employees to report issues. Also, outline protocols for how the person responsible, whether that is a manager, HR representative, or occupational health rep, should respond to these reports.
Communicate the Guidelines Effectively: To ensure that your employees are aware of these role-specific counselling and support guidelines, communicate them effectively. This can be done through regular meetings, internal newsletters, email communications, or your company intranet. Make sure you encourage open conversation about mental health as well, as this can be extremely beneficial.
Remember to continually have a time in the diary for reviewing this whether it be every 12 months or longer.
Use this template to implement
To ensure you can execute seamlessly, download the implementation template.
Pitfalls to avoid
When developing guidelines, be aware of the diverse needs of your employees. Avoid designing one-size-fits-all strategies and instead, strive to cover all backgrounds, cultures, and personal circumstances. Failing to do so can lead to marginalisation of some employees and limit the effectiveness of your support.
Without involving employees in the guideline development process, you risk missing key issues and concerns. Not involving your staff can also create a disconnect, leading to ineffective support policies that don't meet staff needs.
Role-specific counselling and support guidelines are not a set-and-forget solution. They need regular re-evaluation to ensure they remain relevant and effective. Failing to review and refine the guidelines may result in outdated guideline policies that can hamper their effectiveness.
In the Australian context, it is essential to do this within the boundaries of relevant legislation such as the Fair Work Act 2009, and the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Dishonouring these laws might lead to allegations of discrimination or unethical behaviour in the workplace.
To offer effective support, ensure that those providing counsel are properly trained. The lack of specialised training might lead to poor quality support, damaging trust and potentially exacerbating issues instead of resolving them.
Take steps to effectively communicate the implemented guidelines to all employees. Without proper communication, the guidelines can become useless, with employees possibly not even aware of the support available to them.