Course Summary:

The history of counselling in the workplace is not a clear, logical or easy one to determine. It seems to be a story of widely differing
pressures ranging from social, political, economic, institutional/ organizational, individual, practitioner and client sources. Some of these pressures may have been conscious, others deeply unconscious.
Whatever these pressures may be, they have led to the present position of counselling in the workplace. There is no universally accepted definition of employee wellness. In addition, there is little research to address the best practices for managing EWPs. This poses great challenges for benchmarking the effectiveness of an organisation’s EWP. This article aims to provide insights into the nature, content, context, participants, role-players and anticipated benefits and possible drawbacks of EWPs as organisations implement them in South Africa.

Course Objectives:

• define employee wellness as it currently exists in selected South African organisations 
• determine the reasons why organisations introduce Employee Wellness Programmes and the problems they experience in doing so 
• investigate how the organisations present the results of their programmes 
• investigate how organisations rate the success and effectiveness of their EWPs 
• determine employee needs and participation of employees in EWPs
• determine how organisations fund their programmes
• to investigate how managers are involved in managing EWPs in their organisations.

Course Outline

• Employee wellness as participating organisations, service providers and labour unions define it
• Reasons for introducing Employee Wellness Programmes according to participating organisations, service providers and labour unions
• Introduction dates
• Negative consequences of introducing
• Reasons why organisations rated their Employee Wellness Programmes as successful
• Measuring the effectiveness of programmes
• Improving Employee Wellness Programmes delivery
• Determining employees’ needs
• Participation rates of employees
• Presenting the results of Employee Wellness Programmes
• Support from managers
• Funding of Employee Wellness Programmes
• Discussion and recommendations
• Defining employee wellness
• Introducing Employee Wellness Programmes: Reasons and negative consequences
• Presenting the results of Employee Wellness Programmes
• Success, effectiveness and improvement of Employee Wellness Programmes
• Employee needs and participation of employees in Employee Wellness Programmes
• Expenditure and support from managers
• Limitations and recommendations