In this week’s case study, we have had a look at the calls received by just one of our Employee Assistance helpline professionals in a day – to give you a flavour of the range of issues we manage.
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A male caller wanted help with why he was behaving as he was (out of character). He was recently found with Class ‘A’ drugs on him at work and is going through a disciplinary. We talked about how counselling could help him explore his actions and a referral was made.
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A lady with many years’ service found herself feeling over-stressed at work due to a new role; her manager suggested counselling, which we arranged for her and talked about how this may help her gain a new perspective and improve her ability to ask for help/change.
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A Manager called to see if he could agree with us some more counselling for his staff member. We discussed the contract options and agreed that he would find out if the previous sessions were in the last contract year, and if this were the case they could access further counselling. We also talked about how the clinical team would need to hear from the counsellor in order to make a one-off agreement.
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A later Caller rang our
EAP line to take advantage of our counselling service and a referral was made for her.
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The next Caller wanted to see what we could offer in terms of a joint problem he was having with his partner. We discussed the possibility of relationship counselling which is available to them, or the possibility of having counselling separately. He decided to talk through his options with his partner and call us back.
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A caller wanted advice on
how to deal with a member of staff who is harassing her, as she is not getting any support from her manager. We talked about her speaking to our employment law information team who would be able to give her advice on how to escalate her complaint, raise a grievance and let her know what evidence would be needed. I also gave her the contact details for ACAS, who deal with all aspects of employment issues
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Caller wanted some advice on what to do about the ‘unfair’ swiping system at work, suggested he speak to ACAS and also our employment law team.
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A lady called who was not sure what to do about a needle stick injury she had just got, I guided her to use NHS Direct and gave her the contact details.
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A manager calls; he has a member of staff who is homeless and would like to know how to deal with it from a management point of view. Thanks to our
Manager Support Service, we arranged for one of our management consultants to call him back to discuss things and gave him the telephone number for Shelterline in the meantime, which is a charity offering advice and information on homelessness.
Phew! A busy day, but unfortunately not an unusual one. We hear from an average 8000 individuals each year. To read more about the trends and issues raised, and what that could mean for UK Employers, why not download a copy of the Clinical Director Report?