CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is the therapy of choice for many mental health problems. Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Simon Easton, discusses whether it should be used to improve employee QoWL
Whats has CBT, the NHS’s favourite psychotherapy, got to offer organisations and individuals wanting to improve Quality of Working Life?
Lord Layard has suggested that CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) should be provided to the unemployed to help them get back to work. He calculated that the money spent providing therapy would be outweighed by the benefits of getting people back to work.
For organisations, this logic appeals if the costs of the therapy can be less than the costs of having staff off sick with stress, depressions, and/or anxiety in their various guises
For individuals, it means that the psychological therapy helps them not only feel better but avoid the risk to their jobs associated with being off work for extended or frequent periods – especially if the NHS waiting lists stretch to many months before a service can be provided.CBT is no panacea. In fact, it tends to mean a range of different therapeutic approaches, all of which, however, emphasise the importance of looking at changing both the environment and the way we react to the environment. This approach is simple in essence, and draws upon distilled common sense. But it recognises that we may have beliefs and expectations that are difficult to challenge and change which can make it difficult to find better ways of dealing with situations we find difficult.
Often the demands made upon us are very great and need to be addressed. Sometimes, the demands we place upon ourselves spring form unproven assumptions. I might believe that a document must be comprehensive when all that was needed was a good enough argument - a weekend lost. I might feel that I can not comment on my workload because I will be thought uncommitted when my boss is surprised that I continue to put up with the demands, but feels she can’t act unless I initiate the process to redistribute workload to others in the team.
The ideas of CBT can help at various levels. They help us identify tendency to be pessimistic, to “catastrophise” (predict disaster), to overgeneralise (one thing went wrong and therefore so will everything else). The basic concept suggests that thinking a bit more carefully and questioning our assumptions and beliefs can help us recognise alternative interpretations or options in difficult situations. These principles then are relevant to therapy, supervision, mentoring, and just plain old day by day living….
The interaction of the various facets within the concept of Quality of Working Life will depend upon not only the reality (childcare problems, poor pay, low demand at work) but the individual’s approach to those issues. One man’s long hours is another man’s avoidance of putting the children to bed. One woman’s excessive responsibility is another’s opportunity to prove herself. So the ideas of CBT are being taken up by psychologists providing services to troubled employees, and by managers, organisational consultants and trainers with a view to improving both the experience of individuals at work and the performance of the organisation on the basis that each will benefit the other.References
Willson R., and Branch R. (2006). Cognitive therapy for dummies.
Greenberger, D. & Padesky, C. (1995). Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think.
