The Significant Roles of Corporate Counselors to Reduce Employee Stress for Enhancing their Performance

Abstract

Purpose: The present study concentrates on the issues that affected the employees directly and acted as stress factors. These stress factors affect how the employees perform while undertaking their duties. Furthermore, this study evaluated how the involvement of the corporate counsel affected the company by enhancing the productivity of the employees. Research design, data and methodology: The research design of this research is a literature content analysis and method for data handling should be described, and the resultant combination of the studies should include the consistency measures for every meta-analysis. Specify any risk assessment of bias that may impact the cumulative evidence, such as the publication bias and the selective reporting within studies. Results: The finding shows that change in the location of employees' organizational restructuring and the introduction of new technologies also contributed to significant organizational stress factors. These results show a substantial correlation between the magnitude of the adjustments' effects on employees' performance. Conclusions: The current study strongly concludes that counselors, through their prowess, can analyze and evaluate the stress factors that are evident among the employees and in the organization. Some of these factors may be office layout, organizational codes of ethics, organization rules, and employees' personal challenges.

1. Introduction

In today's economy, companies and organizations experience stiff completion day by day. With the high competition in the market, companies and organizations have to work on their competitive edge to survive and earn profits in the market (Bliese, Edwards, & Sonnentag, 2017). The current technology has made all the companies have similar products in the market. However, several other issues must be considered while analyzing the competitive level of various organizations. Today's companies have more value on their employees as employees are the company's essential assets (Lee, 2020). Employees drive the productivity of an organization directly. The employees' ability to produce at the standard level or above is an important value that organizations strive to achieve. As much as employees' responsibility to motivate themselves to produce above average, it is also the organizational responsibility to establish ways of motivating employees to enhance their performance at work.

With organizations battling each other to secure the largest portion of the market, most organizations have made strides to enhance the performance of their employees. Organizations have invested in corporate counselors who work towards creating a positive environment for the employees to reduce the stress levels that main cost their productivity (Chander, 2020). These counselors play a significant role in advising the organization on the dos and don'ts to help stimulate the employees' productivity through reducing stress factors in their personal life and the workplace. There are several stress factors that may lead to employees experiencing reduced productivity. These stress factors are such as workplace environment elements, the offices, inter-personal relationships between employees, personal lifestyles, and diseases, among many more. These factors determine how employees perform at work. The corporate counselor makes these stress factors much easier to cope with and reduces the stress among employees, thus enhancing the employees' performance.

The role of the counselor is mainly to work closely with the employees and management to create an optimum environment for maximum productivity for all employees. The counselor is a problem solver for the company (Fassinger & Shullman, 2017). The counselor's main duty is to develop measures for managing and reducing stress levels among employees. A study was conducted at Pepsi Beverage Company to analyze the impact of the corporate counselor on stress matters in the company. The present study focused on the issues that affected the employees directly and acted as stress factors. These stress factors affect how the employees perform while undertaking their duties. Furthermore, the study evaluated how the involvement of the corporate counsel affected the company by enhancing the productivity of the employees.

Figure 1: Adding Insight into the Literature

2. Literature Review

Corporate counselors play a big role in creating an environment that eliminates stress and motivates the employees to produce more effectively. One of the many ways of fostering a good environment for the employees to perform at their best is by encouraging workplace wellness (Nowrouzi, Nguyen, Casole, & Nowrouzi-Kia, 2016). There are several health practices that can be encouraged at various workplaces to create an environment that promotes wellness. Working is a tedious process, and most often, the minds of the employees might once in a while get overwhelmed by work pressure, and as a result, the individual experiences stress at work. Stress, in turn, affects the competitiveness of the employees and makes them less productive. Generally, the productivity of employees is controlled by the moods of the employees each day at work. While in a good, the employees' brains are stimulated to work at their optimum, while when under stress, their brains work below average.

The corporate has to work with the employees' mindset to improve their productivity at work by reducing their stress levels. One of the means that the counselor can use to motivate the employees to produce at their optimum is by encouraging employees to take walks during lunch and tea breaks (Peters, Luke, Bernard, & Trepal, 2020). Walking is an exercise that stimulates the mind killing boredom and sleepiness among employees at the workplace. Walking engages the full body in a continuous exercise that is not that tiresome; thus, the employees will be practicing physiotherapy as they exercise walking. Further, during the seasons with poor weather, employees can be allowed to bask in the sun to warm up in case where the workplaces do not have air conditioners. Furthermore, the organization, through the counselor, could create schedules for sports competitions among departments. By engaging in sports, the employees become motivated and more active at work. Putting more value on workplace wellness motivates the employees to work at their optimum levels.

The workplace environment also directly influences the motivation and morale of the employees. Factors of the office such as lighting, wall paintings, spacing, and the office's general layout influence employees' motivation to produce (Shakoor, 2020). Working in a space that looks good and beautiful gives employees the motivation to get to work each day. The beautiful layout attracts the employee's attention and always makes them more eager to report to work. Further, well-light offices reduce the stress from the eyes that cause strain and thus reduce the productivity of the employees. Eye strain is one of the main factors that affect the productivity of employees who work mainly using computers all day. To improve their productivity, the counselor has to consider advising the management to consider quality office lighting to reduce eye stress among the employees and promote employee productivity. Counselors can advise the management on how to improve the office space to help reduce stress and create an environment that promotes productivity among employees.

Nevertheless, working hours also affect the productivity of employees. In an organization, the employees are the most important assets that should have their interests put first to help the organization grow and develop (Sharma & Lawrence, 2014). For instance, some employment opportunities have shift schedules for employees to work continuously while shifting the employees after a given set period. Industries are most suited to the shift method of rotating employees working on the project but at different times. Furthermore, organizations can implement flexible working hours to promote self driven motivation for employees to work at the hours of the day or night that provide optimum productivity. In the workplace, there are several individuals who have different qualities and preferences in how they work and when they work. These factors, if put into consideration with the stress factors caused by working periods, will be solved and promote productivity among all the employees.

Social interactions have a way of making work easier to complete. The counselor has the mandate to advise the employees on the best ways of engaging with colleagues to make work much more fun and involving (Timotius & Octavius, 2022). Social interactions are achieved by enabling employees to interact amongst themselves based on current trends, such as politics, economics, and social issues. By communicating with each other, the employees break down the boredom in the offices and make it a lively workplace. On the other hand, there are times when there is a lot of work and the pressure is too much; thus, the office and employees would prefer to be quiet to find the optimum atmosphere to work much faster and effectively. Tasks requiring high mental demands are best done in serene environments with the least disturbance. The counselor is responsible for analyzing each department's different responsibilities and creating a code of ethics for each department to promote productivity.

Furthermore, there are several other personal issues that may cause stress to employees and result in reduced productivity. Organizations and companies should consider these factors as challenges that directly affect the company's ability to produce at its maximum level. For this reason, the counselor has to provide counseling to employees to help them solve their problems, reduce their stress levels, and thus promote their productivity at work. For instance, employees might have marital issues, be mourning a loved one, have health complications, and many more that may trigger stress. On the other hand, counselors with the skills at their disposal might find it easy to advise and walk the employee through their problems to ease their stress and increase their productivity. Nevertheless, the counselor might set aside sessions for general counseling each month to help reach out to those who might find it challenging to approach their offices for guidance.

The employees, as the company's main asset, should be well recognized and appreciated by the management when they accomplish certain targets. Appreciation has a way of motivating employees to keep their focus as well as their motivation to produce above average (Bliese et al., 2017). Recognizing and appreciating employees helps the management motivate the employees and make them feel a part of the organization, thus being proud and motivated to produce above average. Recognition and appreciation eliminate stress in the workplace. Each employee who puts good effort at work is more motivated when their efforts are acknowledged. However, when these efforts are unappreciated, then the employees might become stressed. The stress, in turn, results in poor performance among the employees. Furthermore, appreciating one employee motivates the other employees to work towards achieving such targets in the next production year. Recognition can be by acknowledging and congratulating employees or even rewarding them directly for their achievements at work. Recognition reduces the stress level in the workplace and brings the energy to motivate the employees to be more productive.

3. Research Methods

The current research conducted both content analysis method to analysis and collect numerous textual dataset from the literature review database. Description of the methods utilized for risk assessment of bias of the individual studies that includes the specifications of doing the research on a study or outcome level and the way the data is to be utilized in any data synthesis. The principal summary measures should include the risk ratio and mean differences (Woo & Kang, 2020). Methods for data handling should be described, and the resultant combination of the studies should include the consistency measures for every meta- analysis. Specify any risk assessment of bias that may impact the cumulative evidence, such as the publication bias and the selective reporting within studies. Methods of additional analysis should be described, such as the sensitivity or the sub-group analysis if done, indicating the ones that were prespecified. The numbers of the screened studies should be given in the study selection, assessed for eligibility, and included in the review with the reasons for exclusion at every step in a flow diagram. The present features for data extraction should be outlined in the study characteristics and the citations provided. Information on the risk of bias should be presented for each study, and, if available, the outcome level assessment should be shown (Abelha, Fernandes, Mesquita, Seabra, & Ferreira-Oliveira, 2020).

To consider all the outcomes, the benefits, and the harms present in each study, there should be a simple summary of data for each intervention entity and affect the estimates and the confidence intervals. Results of every meta-analysis should be presented that include the confidence intervals and the consistency measures. Results of every meta analysis should be presented, the assessment of bias risk and any additional analyses done. For evidence summary, the main findings should be summarized that should entail the strength of the pieces of evidence for every result and their relevance considered to the critical groups such as the health care providers, the users, and the policymakers. The limitations during the study should be discussed at the review level, such as the incomplete retrieval of the identified research and the reporting bias. A general result interpretation should be provided in the context of other evidence and future research implications (Seong, 2021; Kang, 2021; Kim, 2020).

Lastly, the funding sources should be described with other support that includes data supply and the role of funders for the systematic review. The PRISMA method's data collection process has four steps: identification, screening, eligibility, and the included. The identification step shows the number of identified records through database searching and the count of the additional records identified through other sources. Screening entails the count of the records after removing the duplicated records, which entails the number of screened and excluded records. Eligibility includes the number of full-text articles assessed for eligibility and the number of full-text articles excluded with reasons (Cortese, Tomlinson, & Cipriani, 2019).

The number of studies included in the qualitative synthesis and the study count included in quality synthesis, specifically meta-analysis. Lastly, the review should consist of the appendix, which includes the overall search strategy for more than one database to improve the transparency of the search strategies.

Figure 2: Research Design Process

4. Findings

The present study found out in the literature content that stress factors that affect performance of employees in PEPSI BEVERAGE COMPANY Employees' performance at PEPSI BEVERAGE COMPANY was impacted by both professional and personal issues. issues in work that affect how well employees perform at PEPSI BEVERAGE COMPANY are shown in Table 1 below. N=74.

Table 1: Literature Content from the impact of workplace stress management in a business organization in the service industries by Acquah and Chen (2021).

Table 1 shows a direct link between the type of issue and the number of impacted workers. Workplace harassment, colleague layoffs, the adoption of new technology, and improvements to work practices that left a positive legacy were significant workplace concerns that had an effect on employees' performance (Acquah & Chen, 2021). Changes in job design, business relocation, changes to work regulations, or greater competition did not substantially influence the PEPSI Beverage Company's workforce since these concerns had negative residual values.

Finds on issues of personal concerns depict a sign that there was no meaningful correlation between the type of personal problem and the number of impacted employees. Financial, legal, and marital issues were rated as significant personal issues since they had significant values (Acquah & Chen, 2021). Table 2 also shows that drug and alcohol addiction, bereavement, and health issues did not significantly affect how well PEPSI BEVERAGE Staff members performed at work.

Table 2: Literature Content from the impact of workplace stress management in a business organization in the service industries by Acquah and Chen (2021).

The majority of the time, the heads of departments encountered these discoveries less frequently, although a substantial portion of them did so more frequently. Equal numbers of heads of departments experienced difficulty focusing and making decisions (mean score 1.5) more frequently than less frequently (Ahmed, Khan, Khan, & Mujtaba, 2020). The heads of sections saw fewer frequent increases in work accidents (mean score=2.2), absenteeism (mean score=2.4), sickness (mean score=2.0), and poor hygiene among individuals (mean score=2.4). The majority of the departmental heads did not experience harassment or bullying at all, while a sizeable percentage of them did so more regularly. According to the standard deviation (sd) of the respondents' answers, which ranged between 0.41 and 0.65 and were less than a particular unit on the Likert scale in use, there were often no notable conflicting opinions among the departmental heads. These issues impacted the effectiveness of the workforce. These results are corroborated by Orlans (1991), who claimed that although job stress has significant economic effects in addition to its clear effects on health.

Findings from the interviewed employees showed that a change in the location of employees' organizational restructuring and the introduction of new technologies also contributed to significant organizational stress factors. These results show a substantial correlation between the magnitude of the adjustments' effects on employees' performance and the heads of sections' evaluations, indicating that the effects of the changes on employees were obvious to the department heads (Bhui, Dinos, Galant-Miecznikowska, de Jongh, & Stansfeld, 2016). However, there were discrepancies in the heads of sections' opinions regarding the impact of modified work procedures and modified work policies.

Employee perspectives on the effects of workplace counseling on employee performance at Pepsi Beverage Company On a Likert scale of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the effectiveness of workplace counseling in improving employee performance was evaluated.

The findings further display the real trend in the employees' responses regarding the impact of working experiences on their work performance against the impact of counseling on that performance. According to the data, average, the majority of the employees, or 76.9%, saw an improvement in their performance following counseling (Wang, Sakata, Komiya, & Li, 2020). Counseling helped 60 percent of employees whose issues significantly impacted their performance to improve it, while 20 percent said it helped them to some extent (Bishop, 2013). Employees who had some performance-related issues received assistance to enhance their organizational productivity to a large amount (44.4%), a certain degree (40.7%), and to a small extent (7.4 percent ). These results show that therapy helped the majority of employees whose performance was impacted by issues at work to successfully get back on track. These results are consistent with those who claimed that after counseling, symptoms connected to the job return to normal, and more than 50 percent of the customers and those sick days are decreased by more than 25%. In addition, he claims that stress, substance abuse, anxiety, and depression can all be effectively treated through workplace therapy.

More findings on the stress factors to employees highlight the importance of the correlation between their replies to how much difficulties hindered their performance and how much workplace counseling helped them perform better. The data shows that there was a strong correlation between the degree to which encountered problems affected employee performance and the degree to which counseling helped to enhance employee performance, with a value of 2 (df=12, N=52) = 23.88 at p=0.02 (Bishop, 2013). These results demonstrate that counseling helped employees whose productivity had been hampered by issues at work in the Pepsi Beverage Company to perform better.

However, these studies also show that any organization's success and effectiveness depend largely on the performance of its personnel. Performance was described as acts and behaviors that contribute to the organization's objectives and may be gauged by each person's level of involvement (Tran, Tran, Nguyen, Mach, Phan, & Mujtaba, 2020). Therefore, it's crucial to handle issues connected to underperformance at first from the perspective of performance management. Employee knowledge about Pepsi Beverage Company's workplace counseling programs findings shows that the majority of Pepsi Beverage Company employees (62.2 percent) were aware that the business offered counseling services. However, only 31.1 percent of the workforce was aware that the organization offered a workplace counseling service. 6.8% of the workers were unable to determine whether the company had a workplace counseling program. These results showed that even though the majority of Pepsi Beverage Company employees were aware of the company's workplace counseling program, a sizeable portion of them did not experience its benefits.

Pepsi Beverage Co. preferred's workplace counseling program. According to the research findings, 50% of respondents (n=45) chose internal counseling services, 41% (n=31) preferred private counseling sessions, and 8% (n=6) were unsure about which of the two counseling philosophies they preferred. These results showed that both counseling procedures were equally well-liked by the staff, while internal counseling had a modest advantage over external counseling services. However, a small percentage of the workforce stated that they'd never object if the corporation implemented any counseling program.

Employee Opinions of the Most Successful Counseling Program In-house counseling services were cited as being the most successful in raising employee performance by 60.8 percent (n=45) of the respondents, as opposed to 36.5 percent (n=27) who cited external counseling services. 2.7% (n=2) of the workers in this sample were unsure of their opinions. These findings demonstrated that internal counseling services were more successful at raising employee performance (Shoaib, Mujtaba, & Awan, 2018). However, a sizable percentage of the staff claimed that external counselors were more successful, indicating that a hybrid system combining the two strategies concurrently was a different choice at Beverage Company Pepsi. These results support the observations that the debate about how a service should be offered from within (thereby offering a perspective of possessing more control) or offered externally (thereby offering a perspective of possessing more rigorous confidentiality) should never be viewed as a barrier to the allocation of employee wellbeing programs. They claim that there is sufficient data to imply that there are components that could be merged to generate optimal practice.

Pepsi Beverage Company internal counseling program employee evaluation on a Likert scale of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0, employees rate the in-house counseling services. According to the findings, the majority of workers who responded to the questions about the suitability of in-house counseling services provided mean scores between 1.0 and 1.3, indicating that the in-house counselors offered high-quality services on all of the topics raised: Has knowledge of the organization's culture (mean score: 1.06), is knowledgeable about it (mean score: 1.13), is aware of the main concerns that employees have (mean score: 1.11), and is aware of the relationships between employees and authority (mean score: 1.12). The respondents' standard deviations ranged between 0.235 and 0.345, suggesting less heterogeneity in their answers.

5. Conclusions

For a long time, employees have been neglected and reprimanded for pushing themselves to achieve the organizational goals and objectives. However, times have changed, and more emphasis is put on the well-being of employees. The employees come first as the main asset of today's organizations. Employees' performance, to some extent, is initiated and motivated by the organization in various ways. Research has proven that it is important to take care of the mental needs of the employees by trying to manage and reduce stress among them through a counselor to promote their performance. Employees, like any other individual, face some challenges in their lives that cause stress to them, which in turn affect their productivity. A counselor has the skills and knowledge to solve individuals' mental challenges in their daily lives. These skills and knowledge are what organizations capitalize on to help work with their employees to reduce their stress levels at work and increase their productivity.

Counselors, through their prowess, can analyze and evaluate the stress factors that are evident among the employees and in the organization. Some of these factors may be office layout, organizational codes of ethics, organization rules and regulations, and employees' personal challenges (Shoaib et al., 2018). A skilled counselor has the privilege to take into consideration the factors they find in their research and come up with a comprehensive measure to help the organization and employees reduce the stress factors and promote productivity. Counselors create a stress free environment for the employees to increase their performance and elevate organizational productivity.

From the research findings, one of the main implications that organizations have to take into consideration is employing a corporate counselor. A corporate counselor is cheaper than a private one making it more cost-effective for the organization's expenditure. Nevertheless, a corporate counselor will be more in touch with the organization and employees' needs as they would be present in the organization interacting with various individuals and factors, which would help them outline measures to better the productivity of the organization by working to eliminate stress factors among employees. Corporate counselors have more responsibilities to the organization compared to private ones. Corporate counselors

The organization should as well put suggestion boxes for employees to address their issues in a bid to better their productivity in the workplace. Suggestions have to be anonymous for the employees to feel free to address issues with the counselor at any time (Ibrahim, Imtiaz, Mujtaba, Vinh Vo, & Ahmed, 2020). Nevertheless, the counselor should also take the initiative to collect the suggestions made and try to address them from their end. This way, the organization will work as a team towards bettering its productivity. Employees, the counselor, and management will create a bond that would allow them to make the company become a responsibility for all the staff working together as a team and a family. An organization with a team mentality is easier to progress through the ranks of achievement as employees will be self-motivated and driven to work on their performance and those of their colleagues towards increasing the production of the organization.

On the other hand, incentives can be put in place to help motivate employees to enhance their performance and achieve the set targets of the organization. Incentives are rewarded organizations give to exemplary employees who have achieved certain goals and objectives (Bishop, 2013). Incentives can be annual, semiannual, quarterly, or performance-based rewards. Incentive strategies help boost the mental strengths of employees, allowing them to work with an end goal in mind that keeps most of the stress factors away. Incentives work as bait, and they stimulate employees to prioritize working towards achieving the set goals and objectives to earn a reward at the end of the stipulated time. Nevertheless, incentives have to be rational. Rational in a way that they are achievable and manageable. This way, the incentive programs in organizations will effectively work. Also, the incentive programs have to be handled with integrity. He deserved employees should be rewarded as it will not only propel their motivation but also for those others who put a similar effort but never achieved as much.

These responsibilities have to be handed over to the corporate counselor as well as giving them the authority to work at their best. The counselors can only achieve the goals when the top management allows the corporate counselors to work at their best without any restrictions. By allowing the corporate counselors to work with all their authority, the counselors will take into consideration several issues that might have been overlooked, such as personal lifestyle and other organizational changes to better reduce stress factors and promote performance in the organization.