Counselling Approach Essay

2519 Words11 Pages
Abstract Currently, work-related stress is one of the biggest health issues in Europe. Due to the changing work conditions in the past few years, stress and burnout evoked by psychosocial hazards at work have become more and more a focus in research. The following essay deals with the impact counselling may have on work-related stress. Stress in the workplace can lead to severe consequences on both the individual and the organisation. This is one reason why the global interest in researching work-related stress has increased over the past few years. This paper is divided in three main parts: The first part deals with the problem of “work-related stress” in general and its impacts on the organisation and on the individual. Secondly, a possible counselling approach to address this important topic will be introduced. The last part deals with the evaluation of counselling in this area and how effective it might be. Keywords: work-related stress, counselling, mentoring, coaching, intervention Work-related stress Despite the fact that research on work-related stress has increased in the past years, there does not exist an official definition to describe the issue. The European Commission attempted to include many existing definitions and defined it as followed: “Work-related stress can be defined as a pattern of emotional, cognitive, behavioural and physiological reactions to adverse and noxious aspects of work content, work organisation and work environment. It is a state characterised by high levels of arousal and distress and often by feelings of not coping” (European Commission, 2000, p. 5). In 2005, stress was reported as the second most common health issue at work. In average, 22% of employees reported to be affected negatively by work-related stress in Europe. The lowest level of stress (12%) was conducted in the United Kingdom and the highest was
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