A Research On Employees' Psychological Contract,Perceived Risk And Willingness To Seek Psychological Help

Recent years, a rapid development of Employee Assistance Program (EAP) has emerged in China. However, as an essential part of EAP, the resistance.to use Psycho-consultation service could directly lead to profoundly negative effects on the return of the investment. In order to improve the quality of Psycho-consultation service, researching employees'intention to seek help from professionals and the related influencing factors is of great importance. Also, the results can be used to design specifically tailored services and to predict prospective EAP market.Four questionnaires from previous studies are adopted and referenced, including Psychological Contract Inventory, Risk Perception Questionnaire, Intentions to Seek Employee Assistance Program Service, and a self-made Demographic Variable Questionnaire. Three hundred and sixty-six employees participated in this survey, noting that civil servants, staffs of public institution and research institution are excluded. The following results are analyzed from the survey data using SPSS 16.0 and AMOS 21.0.(a) Employees'perceived risk towards free Psycho-consultation service consists of four dimensions:psychological risk, social risk, functional value risk and service quality risk.(b) A revised version of Intentions to Seek Employee Assistance Program Service (18 items) based on China's employees is proved to be of high reliability and validity. Three dimensions, family-domestic issues, work-related issues and psycho-emotional issues, are found.(c) Employees'willingness to turn to free Psycho-consultation service is slightly below average. Comparatively, the majority would seek professional help when they face psycho-emotional issues while they tend to handle domestic problems by themselves.(d) Among demographic variables, employees'willingness to seek professional help shows significant differences in gender. A significant difference between education and income level also exists in perceived risk while education, income levels and positions differ significantly in psychological contract.(e) Perceived risk and its dimensions have a negative correlation with employees' help-seeking intention. Although none significant correlation is found between psychological contract and help-seeking intention, the total psychological contract and its transactional type shows a significantly positive correlation with family-domestic issues.(f) Higher psychological risk could discourage employees to seek help. Also, two types of psychological contract are investigated:transactional psychological contract (TPC) and relational psychological contract (RPC). The result shows that both TPC and RPC can negatively affect psychological risk. Hence, solid TPC can motivate employees to seek professional help about family-related issues. Besides, TPC is also found to be a mediator between the psychological risk and family-domestic issues.