Predicting the future

Predicting the future Tony Buon considers what the next decade has in store for workplace counselling A ttempts to predict the future can be embarrassing. In 1943, Thomas Watson, as chairman of IBM, predicted ‘there is a world market for maybe five computers.’ In 1962, the Decca Recording Company rejected the Beatles: ‘we don’t like their sound and guitar music is on the way out.’ Based on my experience of more than 20 years as a practitioner and entrepreneur, and on current strategic management theory and global trends, I will attempt to forecast developments in ounselling at work over the next decade. Development of a global market Tony Buon, BA (Psych), MA (Hons) CEAP, is a workplace psychologist and consultant, a partner in Eastburn Partnership and a part-time lecturer at the Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University. www.eastburnpartnership.co.uk One of the most significant developments in workplace counselling over the past 10 years has been the emergence of the global EAP market. While EAPs originated in the USA, the market in Asia, Oceania and Europe continues to grow. For example, there are successful programmes running in South Africa, China, Japan, Finland and Russia. Many international companies are currently establishing global human resource management (HRM) programmes, including EAPs and counselling. These companies are demanding a consistency or ‘harmonisation’ of service provision from global EAP providers. There is also a significant risk that this may result in a type of service that is so homogenised it is unrecognisable. To meet the needs of these international companies, ‘super-EAP’ providers have been formed and will continue to be formed through merger or acquisition. These large, global providers with offices in dozens of countries and a ‘big-business’ mentality will result in streamlined and strictly managed services. For example: counselling sessions limited to 45 minutes (not 65 as that increases costs globally by tens of thousands of dollars); counsellors being required to produce clinical reports in a standardised online form (probably the Diagnostic Standards Manual) and strict case and cost management. A large majority of workplace counsellors will be employed, probably on a sub-contractor basis, by these global providers. 10 Counselling at Work Summer 2004 Part of this ‘globalisation’ of EAP and related services will be the emergence of very low-cost alternatives for employers who wish to either ‘tick the box’ and meet a requirement for an EAP or those who require a ‘two-tiered’ model of service delivery. These low-cost services will offer very limited and tightly-controlled services to employers utilising online services or low-cost call centres. The online services (one was recently launched in the UK ) offer a low-cost alternative to the internal or external model. Utilising email, chat, voice-to-voice and webcams these online providers offer simple, efficient and secure alternatives to both internal and external models of EAP and employee counselling. Over the last few years we have seen the financial services industry in the UK outsourcing call centres to India and other locations. A future plan for these offshore call centres is to develop specialist services, such as telephone counselling. At least one super-EAP provider is presently in discussion with an Indian call centre to look at outsourcing professional services currently offered by local staff. In future, low-cost telephone counselling provided by multi-lingual and qualified staff based in call centres in India and possibly China will offer services to a global market on a 24/7 basis. A further important trend is that organisations are increasingly attempting flexible models of employment that segment the labour force into ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ groups, with the former being much more privileged than the latter (Atkinson, 19841). For the core group ‘full’ EAP and work-life services will be made available, but for the periphery group only low-cost online or telephone services will be accessible. This will result in a two- tiered level of service delivery and the emergence of two markets. One market will deliver high-cost, high service (including face-toface counselling) EAPs and the other, low-cost and very limited counselling and information services. A shift from internal to external services There is a worldwide trend towards outsourcing EAP and other forms of workplace counselling and predicting the future cost reduction is always a large element of the rationale. The catchy slogan of leading US management guru Tom Peters ‘Do what you do best and outsource the rest,’ (1988)2 sums up this management orthodoxy well. Of course it is not just EAPs that are being outsourced: training, recruitment, health and safety, and other human resource activities are all prime candidates. Outsourcing is seen as cost effective, strategic, effective and desirable. Modern human resource management emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing people in as ‘rational’ a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 19893). In simple terms this means that outsourcing a service such as employee welfare or EAP is generally regarded as a successful and desirable management strategy. I would therefore predict that this trend of outsourcing workplace counselling will continue and in 10 to 15 years there are unlikely to be any internal models in operation. Paradoxically, increased work intensification in the future will result in an even greater need for workplace counselling at a time when access through internal counselling and face-to-face counselling will be increasingly restricted. Workplace counselling is known to assist workers with the stress and personal problems that are an inevitable result of work intensification. However, in the future it may only be a select group of employees who receive the high level of individual counselling that was available in the past 20 years. Workplace counselling has an admirable history based on core values of compassion and integrity. Unfortunately the future I have predicted here is a shift from the integrity-based response to a compliance-based response. It is a shift from welfare to economic rationalism. It may even be a shift from professionalism to superficiality. ■ References 1 Atkinson J. Manpower strategies for flexible organisations. Personnel Management. 1984;16:8. 2 Peters TJ, Waterman RH. In Search of Excellence; Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies. Warner Books; 1988. 3 Storey J (ed). New Perspectives in Human Resource Management. London: Routledge; 1989. Letter to the editor Dear Editor, Norman Claringbull’s article about specialist practitioners (spring 2004) was stimulating and an invitation to an important debate. It is good that more practitioners and academics are involving themselves in research and reflection about the nature and future of workplace counselling. I write to make a few observations of my own in response to Norman’s article. ACW, especially the Executive Committee, is to be congratulated on raising awareness and standards of workplace counselling over the past years and firmly placing it at the forefront among BACP’s other work. Many writers have reflected on the development and practice of workplace counselling. I maintain that part of their success results from a high standard of reflexive practice within the field and needs encouragement at practitioner/ organisational level. Pickard (1997)1 has promoted the concept of the ‘organisation as client’ alongside English’s (1975)2 and Micholt’s (1992)3 frameworks of ‘three corneredcontract’ and ‘psychological distance’ respectively. These practical concepts all recognise the needs of the organisation as of equal importance to those of the individual. I maintain that they should remain the cornerstone of our approach to counselling and other allied interventions in the workplace as they are one way of ensuring a demonstration of beneficence to both the client and the individual. Any bias towards the organisation would set up an imbalance in the power relationship between individual and organisation. While I 100 per cent support the notion that we need to continue to research and develop models of workplace counselling and allied interventions, e.g. coaching and mentoring, the idea of creating ‘specialist practitioners’ begs several questions. Who sets the agenda for the specialism? Different customer organisations may require different models of interventions; therefore do we need a multiplicity of models as organisational needs constantly change (Carroll, 19964)? If we encourage counsellors to specialise in this area what are the routes for career progression? The counselling world has a chequered history of what happens when particular models of counselling and psychotherapy have been promoted alongside (and at times in competition with) each other. Yes, let’s develop highly qualified and trained individuals for this area of work, but let’s beware of creating another workplace counselling oligarchy. John Towler, BACP accredited counsellor and supervisor References 1 Pickard E. In: Handbook of Counselling in Organisations. Carroll M, Walton M (eds). London: Sage Publications; 1997. 2 English F. The Three Cornered Contract. Transactional Analysis Journal. 1975;5(4):383-4. 3 Micholt N. Psychological distance and group interventions. Transactional Analysis Journal. 1982;22(4):228-33. 4 Carroll M. Workplace Counselling. London: Sage Publications; 1996. Counselling at Work Summer 2004 11