Providing supervision to counselors

GLC

We are a counseling center and provide supervision to counselors who are looking to get licensed. We often have employees who will get their supervision from us and will then leave shortly thereafter. We are looking to implement a system where new employees that we hire would have to repay us for the supervision time they receive if they leave the company within one year after receiving the required supervision. I would like to know if other centers do this and how it works. Is this enforceable in a court of law if the employee signs off on it? Could we hold their last paycheck if they leave and owe us money for this?

Trinity

I know that in the financial industry, it is very common for banks and credit unions to require employees to sign a form stating that they will promise to stay with the company for a year after they complete their schooling, if the institution has paid for that tuiton. I am not aware of any legal ramifications that state you HAVE to stay though. In fact, many states don't allow you to deduct from an employee's paycheck for thinds like these, so I am not sure how enforcable it is should we have to back it up..hasn't happened yet though. I guess the employees believe it to be binding when they sign the form and that is good enough for us..sort of like a non-compete clause..

sonny

I don't know how you would count/charge the time for this? I am assuming a lot of the supervision occurs in the course of the counselor doing their job, so your organization and clients are benefiting. How would sort out what is just clinical supervision that would occur whether they are going for a license or not from that required for licensure? Sorry for all the questions, but am having trouble seeing how this would work? Also, when I was in this line of work, we gave a pay increase when licensure was obtained. If you are not doing that now, perhaps it would be an incentive to stay.

Crout

I think that it would be a bad idea on a few levels, and have never heard of this within the Human Service realm. To begin with, you ideally want to attract top-notch therapists to better serve your clients, and implementing such a repayment system would be a barrier to that. Are your therapists providing billable hours to clients while working toward their license? Their individual salaries should be based on the level of revenue they're bringing in, along with level of credentials and experience. So a newly minted Master's level therapist without a license should not be making the same as more experienced, credentialed folks, and that's how you would pay for the therapeutic supervision.