An investigation of the status of Workplace Counseling in Chainama Hills College Hospital and Munali Boys Secondary School in Lusaka District, Zambia

In many workplaces, workers face widely differing challenges that people as individuals or groups experience which range from social, economic, institutional/ organizational, individual and or family difficulties. Scholarly literature has shown that work and workplaces are rapidly evolving making the 21st century social and occupational medicine susceptible to manage a different set of emerging work related problems. This present study investigated the status of workplace counselling in Chainama Hills College Hospital and Munali Secondary School in Lusaka District, Zambia.
This was a qualitative participatory study informed by the Job Performance Theory. The aim was to assess the status of workplace counselling and determine possible factors that influence workers to seek workplace counselling. Primary data was collected using self-administered questionnaires and Key Informant Interviews for employees and managers. 40 respondents fourteen at Chainama and twenty six at Munali participated respectively. Of these, twenty three were males and seventeen females.
Findings showed that the provision of occupational health, psychological, HIVandAIDS, disciplinary support and career development through procedural, individualised and progressive types of workplace counselling characterise employee interventions in the two selected institutions. Further, expected benefits from counselling service, counselling procedures, and counsellor qualifications were some of the factors that influence employees to seek workplace counselling. Although no standards in workplace counselling existed such as secure rooms, procedure for counselling and specialised staff, the study concluded that workplace counselling existed in the two targeted institutions because employees indicated that they received services which could be described as workplace counselling.
This study, however, demonstrated that for workplace services to qualify as workplace counselling, there should be set standards that secure the confidentiality of information as defined iij the field of counselling. It is argued that workplace counselling should focus on employee welfare and link employee support to improved job performance. In this regard, although this study deduced that workplace counselling existed in the two targeted institutions, the services did not meet standards of workplace counselling