Psy­chol­o­gist Daryl Joseph will make his­to­ry next month.

Ear­li­er this year Joseph, the co-founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Jos­al Con­sult­ing, was elect­ed un­op­posed to the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent-elect of the In­ter­na­tion­al Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion (EA­PA), the world’s old­est and largest as­so­ci­a­tion for em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­fes­sion­als.

When he is sworn-in in Oc­to­ber, he will be the first pres­i­dent-elect of the as­so­ci­a­tion from out­side of North Amer­i­ca in its 51-year his­to­ry.

How­ev­er, he is hop­ing to bring about a new aware­ness con­cern­ing em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance to T&T.

“Hon­est­ly, the role is one thing and I’m very I’m hum­bled by it. I’m thank­ful but I in­tend to make my mark and I in­tend to rep­re­sent to the best of my abil­i­ty. But I think what’s more im­por­tant is for us as a coun­try and all lead­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, to re­alise that peo­ple are not ma­chines. And things im­pact the way peo­ple work. And if we want to get the best out of peo­ple, if we want to get not just the best work, we want to get the best ideas, the most cre­ative so­lu­tions the best prod­ucts we need, we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that peo­ple are at their best,” said Joseph, who not­ed that there were sev­er­al neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tions float­ing around the coun­try which im­pact­ed the work­force.

Joseph has been with EA­PA for 14 years. Dur­ing his time there he was en­tranced by the scope of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s work but over time made his mark with his con­tri­bu­tions.

“I’ve al­ways been fas­ci­nat­ed with the work and with the po­ten­tial of the work. And so I got in­volved. I was on our sub-com­mit­tee from 2014 to 2017 that’s the sub-com­mit­tee deal­ing with peo­ple want­i­ng to be­come cer­ti­fied in em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance. So the com­mis­sion that over­saw the ex­am­i­na­tion,” said Joseph, who ex­plained that ex­pe­ri­ence saw him thrust in­to the deep end as he took on cru­cial as­pects of the ex­am pro­ce­dure. It, how­ev­er, helped build his rep­u­ta­tion with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion and lead to his elec­tion to the EA­PA board of di­rec­tors in 2020.

“My first for­ay in­to be­ing on a com­mit­tee was in­volved in ac­tu­al­ly writ­ing ques­tions for the ex­am­i­na­tion and re­view­ing queries and that sort of thing and al­so three years of do­ing that. You get what­ev­er you don’t un­der­stand from your own prac­tice. Your knowl­edge ramps up very quick­ly. So two years af­ter I com­plet­ed that time on that com­mit­tee, I was elect­ed by the mem­ber­ship at the mem­ber­ship elec­tions to the board of di­rec­tors,” said Joseph.

His new role will see him pre­pare to take up the full pres­i­den­tial role in two years, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion tran­si­tions from its cur­rent pres­i­dent.

De­spite the many firsts at­tached to his ti­tle, Joseph said he was not ex­pect­ing his ap­proach to be de­fined by that.

“I was raised in a fam­i­ly where my par­ents taught us to be aware of things but not to al­low things to be­come a prob­lem. So the is­sues around, that I am the first per­son of African de­scent and I’m the first pres­i­dent out­side of North Amer­i­ca (to be elect­ed). But I’m aware of those things,” said Joseph.

“I will nev­er have and I will not make it a prob­lem. I treat every­body as peo­ple I reach out and I li­aise with peo­ple and I deal with peo­ple I deal with prob­lems just as they are on the sur­face. And it has worked for me. I think that par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter­is­tic ac­tu­al­ly is one of the rea­sons why the mem­ber­ship ac­cept­ed me.”

Joseph is hope­ful that his as­cen­sion will al­low for greater un­der­stand­ing with re­gard to the im­por­tance of em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance, which he said is cur­rent­ly be­ing mis­rep­re­sent­ed as sim­ple coun­selling for work­ers.

He point­ed to the re­cent protest in Co­corite as one ex­am­ple of a sit­u­a­tion which has nu­mer­ous rip­ple ef­fects which are of­ten over­looked in the work­place with re­gard to both em­ploy­ee well be­ing and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“They’re protest­ing what they be­lieve they are en­ti­tled to, and they’re protest­ing things that they’re frus­trat­ed about. They’re protest­ing things that they be­lieve they de­serve to have. I imag­ine some of those peo­ple at least have a work­place to go to.

“I imag­ine that the hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple who were de­layed in get­ting in­to Port-of-Spain this morn­ing have work­places to go to. What sort of frame of mind do you think the peo­ple who were in traf­fic this morn­ing are in? Or the peo­ple who are protest­ing, peo­ple who don’t have wa­ter or don’t have what­ev­er it is, what sort of frame of mind are those peo­ple get in­to their work­place with? How are they able to func­tion and put in a good day’s work, put in some sol­id hours, but then you know, qual­i­ty work?” he asked.

Joseph not­ed that of­ten man­agers are too locked in­to get­ting the job done as op­posed to recog­nis­ing that the en­vi­ron­ment cre­at­ed for their work­ers isn’t con­ducive to hit­ting the ex­pect­ed tar­gets.

“Every­where you look, there are signs of peo­ple, signs of dys­func­tion, men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly as well be­cause they’re all tied to­geth­er. And you know, man­agers or su­per­vi­sors are not trained to deal with peo­ple at this lev­el, they are trained to get the work done. ‘Al­right, so who’s gonna do it? How’s it gonna get done?’ This is where em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance is and it is crit­i­cal at this point, if we are to move for­ward as a na­tion, as a pro­duc­tive na­tion, crit­i­cal at this point,” said Joseph, who recog­nised the sit­u­a­tion has on­ly been am­pli­fied by the pres­sures cre­at­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Every­where in our coun­try peo­ple are stressed, peo­ple are un­der pres­sure, peo­ple have to deal with traf­fic. They have to deal with prob­lems with ed­u­ca­tion and chil­dren. They have to deal with mon­ey prob­lems. And yet still we mas­quer­ade, it’s fun­ny how things in life rhyme. We play mas but we al­so mas­quer­ade a lot and we pre­tend that peo­ple in the work­place are func­tion­ing well, where­as all the signs of dys­func­tion are there for all and every­body to see,” he said.

“The job of em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance is a mam­moth one be­cause we are the pro­fes­sion­als. We are the ones with the ex­pe­ri­ence, who are ex­pect­ed to help the per­sons who were stuck in traf­fic this morn­ing,” Joseph said, “Not just to get to work safe­ly, but to be calm, to be poised, to put aside the frus­tra­tion they have and to deal with a prob­lem col­league, a su­per­vi­sor or a man­ag­er who is down their neck, cus­tomers who are down their throats to deal with all of these things with a cool, calm, clear head and not just to be calm but to be pas­sion­ate, right? To be de­vot­ed to their work and to re­al­ly, re­al­ly give up their best. That is the task. That is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, that is the chal­lenge of em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance.”

Joseph ex­plained com­pa­nies need­ed to take a more nu­anced and in­tro­spec­tive ap­proach in a bid to en­sure their em­ploy­ees could be at their best, to de­liv­er their best.

“A prop­er em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance ap­proach starts with lead­er­ship. It starts with cul­ture. It starts with prac­tices that starts with habits and trick­les down to ed­u­ca­tion and trick­les down to deal­ing with peo­ple some­times on a one-on-one ba­sis.

“The prac­tice of Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance world­wide is what I just de­scribed. It’s a top-down ap­proach that be­gins at the lead­er­ship lev­el,” he said, “You un­der­stand the im­por­tance of tak­ing this kind of ap­proach be­cause in many in­stances, what hap­pens is that you want to fix peo­ple by send­ing them for coun­selling, but then you bring them back in­to a tox­ic en­vi­ron­ment where the dys­func­tion is once again raised and where all of the rea­sons they be­came in the state. It all comes back again be­cause of what’s hap­pen­ing with­in the work­place. Be­cause of the cul­ture be­cause of the habits, be­cause of process­es, be­cause of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

He said sev­er­al of the world’s top com­pa­nies have ad­just­ed their em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­grammes to ad­dress these con­cerns and urged many lo­cal com­pa­nies to fol­low suit.