Transformative Counseling can aid in employee happiness and ultimately staff retention.

Malaysia, as a country, is undergoing rapid changes. The economy is growing and many services oriented industries are setting shop at an increasingly rapid rate. Malaysia is also home to a growing number of Business Process outsourcing, IT/ITES organisations.

The problems facing these service professionals are remarkably homogenous (much more so than any other industry). In fact, the issues plaguing the ITES/BPO companies are also remarkably similar.

One of the key concerns of almost all the CEOs of these companies is attrition. How do you increase employee loyalty? How should one retain people for a longer period of time? How do we increase the quality of people coming in? How do we bring the incoming call agents up to speed quickly? How do we adhere to the SLAs (service level agreements)? Key questions which have proved nagging and difficult to handle.

Innovative practices to no avail

It is not for the lack of trying that these problems persist. Many of the most innovative HR practices have emanated in these companies. The effects do not seem to be long lasting. In the end there is no silver bullet; there is no single sugar pill that will solve the problem.

As usual, difficult and intractable problems need deep solutions. Many of the solutions may seem commonsensical. The rigour is required more in consistency, following through plans and sticking to them through thick and thin.

In this article, I would argue that one of the most key drivers to employee loyalty is the happiness of the employee.

Sure all employees may have problems. Which company does not have employees who are unhappy or who carry their problems from their personal lives to their profession? But yet the impact of a deeply unhappy employee is felt more in the service industries because of the aggravating factors. Routine work, monotony, untimely hours, and fighting against the biological system exacerbates the power of even small problems.

Companies that keep their employees happy or try to do this genuinely are far more likely to keep their employees than those that don’t. Happiness and a healthy demeanor also have another beneficial result. The employees’ performance levels increase and they stay on to the job for a longer period of time.

Keeping them happy

So what is it that organisations can do to increase the levels of employee Happiness?

We would like to call this as the EHP factor. Some of the common observations in organisations are:

• Companies where more employees are unhappy create a negative energy pattern
• These negative energy patterns affect newcomers as well as other employees in the office.
• Individuals in the office, even if they are not interacting with the employees, feel this deeply.
• The effects of this energy are felt more when the level of energy of the employee is low or when the levels of motivations are low.

So EHP is contagious. It spreads like wildfire. A high EHP acts like a soothing balm, smoothening the rough edges and cushioning the impact of mood swings.

Many organisations have intuitively attempted to increase the EHP levels. Many have tried counseling with some good results. Counseling does increase the well being of the individual, but it is dependent on the employee. The success rates are not uniformly high.

Even though counseling has evolved over the period, it sometimes relies too much on the individual employee for success. It is a hit and trial method. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. The results are always not known and sometimes it takes too long to impact the organisation. Ultimately true happiness comes not from the mind but from the heart or the soul.

Counseling works through the conscious mind and attempts to get to the subconscious and the unconscious. Since most of the problems or root causes of happiness lie at the unconscious or subconscious layers, it is very difficult to divine the results of counseling.

Counseling works more on the visible symptoms, visible and observable behaviour patterns and the client’s conscious mental disposition. The conscious mind constitutes only about 2.5% of the entire existence. This means that we are using this 2.5% to divine the remaining 97.5%.

There is a more powerful method of bringing about the results using “Transformative Counseling”. Transformative Counseling uses a combination of Non directional Counseling and Spiritual Sciences techniques to address the issues faced by an individual.

Unlike in Normal Counseling, in Transformative Counseling the attempt is to parallel work on the conscious and unconscious layers of the mind. The effects are more remarkable and long lasting when they emanate from the unconscious layer. Also since most of the causes are in this layer, if we can understand this layer, the problems will be unraveled much quicker than any other method.

Once the true problem is known and once the purpose or the goal is established it is much easier to direct the client at the conscious level. Also when we work on the unconscious level, the brain usage pattern alters dramatically. Unseen talents, latent potential come to the surface and this adds to the sense of purpose of the individual.

Counseling then helps in deepening the experiences of the client and makes them understand some of the key issues. The following table illustrates the difference between Counseling and Transformative counseling.

Aashwasan Life Enhancement Services Sdn Bhd is an organisation that provides various corporate services to entrepreneurs, top managers, consultants to empower them and bring out the best from within the individual or the organisation. For more information on Aashwasan, visit www.aashwasan.com, view videos at www.youtube.com/aashwasan or contact them at +603- 80614735 or +60173645625.

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