September/October 2011
Employee assistance programs can give employers and employees the resources to manage personal and work circumstances that affect workplace safety and productivity.
By Alison Brown
Imagine a supervisor comes to you, the safety manager, with concerns about one of his workers. “Eli comes to work every day, but he hasn’t been himself lately,” the supervisor says. “He seems tired and distracted, but he brushes off my questions, saying everything’s fine and I should just let him do his job.” You’ve noticed the difference in this worker’s demeanor as well, but it has not risen to the level of a disciplinary action. He’s been one of your best workers until lately, and you’re concerned, both because you care about him and because you know a distracted worker is not a safe worker.
Eli could be facing any number of problems. Maybe his wife lost her job recently, and he’s dealing with the stress of adjusting to the lower income or of taking on a second job. Maybe he had a recent injury, and he’s become dependent on painkillers to get him through the day. Or maybe he’s worried about his daughter, whose mood swings seem to be more serious than those of a typical teenager.
Employees who are dealing with personal, family, or work-related issues can put themselves and others at risk. Though physically present, they are mentally absent. The issues they are dealing with could lead to increased absenteeism, substandard job performance, and—most important for safety managers—a greater likelihood of accidents. If Eli were a piece of scrap processing equipment that seemed a little bit off track, you would almost certainly know whom to call. You have trained maintenance personnel, and the equipment manufacturer or seller most likely offers packages of routine and emergency maintenance to keep the equipment running smoothly, safely, and efficiently. An employee assistance program offers something similar for your workers and their families. It’s a maintenance program staffed with trained professionals who can work with employees, their families, and the entire workplace to keep everyone safe, efficient, and productive.
Employee assistance programs can identify and resolve complex issues—whether a single employee, his or her family, or the entire workplace is facing them—by providing confidential access to off-site or on-site counseling and other resources. The services of an EAP can help a company retain valuable employees by circumventing personal issues before they have serious medical, family, or workplace consequences.
History and Practice
EAP originally stood for employee alcoholism program. Major companies such as AT&T (Dallas) and DuPont (Wilmington, Del.) created these programs in the 1940s to provide systematic solutions to the complex and costly issues related to their workers’ alcohol abuse. The companies realized they could retain valuable employees who had drinking problems, as well as recoup the costs associated with hiring and training them, if they could get the workers to address their drinking. EAP service providers were recovering alcoholics with firsthand knowledge of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.
By the 1960s, the programs had expanded to address a wider range of workplace and family circumstances that were affecting employees’ productivity: divorce, issues related to the growing role of women in the work force, abuse of substances other than alcohol, and family conflicts. Over time, with the expanded scope of these EAPs, they were renamed employee assistance programs. Though the nature of the issues evolved, the principle remains the same. As the Employee Assistance Professionals Association (Arlington, Va.) puts it, an EAP exists “to improve and/or maintain the productivity and healthy functioning of the workplace and to address a work organization’s particular business needs through the application of specialized knowledge and expertise about human behavior and mental health.”
Companies can offer an EAP as part of their benefits package by hiring an EAP provider to administer and manage the program, paying rates that might range from $15 to $35 per employee per year, depending on the depth and breadth of resources it provides. The EAP’s services are free for the employee or employee family member. A basic program might offer mental health and substance abuse services, while a more comprehensive program might offer financial or legal counseling; assistance arranging adoption, child care, elder care, and pet care; health and wellness programs; human resource and management resources; and more. Business owners should choose an EAP that provides the services and coverage their workers need. Some insurance companies offer a discount to employers that have comprehensive EAPs.
The EAP should provide a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week hotline for reaching its counselors, who provide immediate assessment and counseling and refer the caller to additional resources when needed. The counselors also can provide additional face-to-face counseling sessions, telephone support, and critical incident response—therapeutic intervention for workplaces that have experienced an accident or death, for example.
EAP counseling sessions are short-term problem-solving sessions that address an issue over a period of five to seven meetings. The primary purpose is to identify the root causes of the issue and potential solutions, which could include referrals for additional services. Typically, the company’s health insurance plan covers some of the cost of physical and mental health services to which the EAP might refer a client. For other services available through the EAP, such as legal or financial advice, the client might need to pay fees for services that extend beyond the initial consultation.
Use of the EAP is confidential, with a few exceptions (discussed later). The EAP does not report back to the company which specific employees used it and for what issues; instead, it provides an aggregate report of the total number of EAP users over a specific time period and the types of issues they addressed, giving the company a sense of whether the workers are making use of the service.
Getting Started
When a company implements an EAP, it typically holds a brief orientation for its workers and distributes a letter or brochure that outlines the resources available on what issues, and how they can access services. It’s also a good idea for companies to mail the information to their workers’ home addresses to make their family members aware of the benefits as well. Supervisors and managers should receive training to help them recognize when individuals could benefit from the EAP’s services—and when they can use the EAP for management training or assistance with a workplace problem. From that point, there are three avenues through which workers access EAP services:
Self-referrals. Many people over the years have told me they tried to address a problem themselves by talking with a family member or close friend, but they really wanted and needed an objective, professional opinion. That’s why self-referrals are a strong component of a successful EAP. When employees opt to address an issue on their own while it’s still reasonably manageable, it costs much less emotionally and financially for everyone—employer, employee, or family member—than it would if it became bigger and more complex. Employees can seek help for themselves or for a family member such as a child or spouse. When the employee is seeking help for a family member, the EAP counselor usually will talk with the employee first about his or her concerns, then encourage the employee to come to a counseling session with the family member to address the issue in an open discussion.
Employees’ family members also can seek the EAP’s help on their own. Many of us know someone who carries the emotional burden of a loved one in trouble. An EAP can lift that burden from a company employee who wants to support his or her family member but does not know how. It also can give that family member a place to turn for help for themselves or to address a problem facing the employee.
Leadership referrals. Supervisors or managers can make use of an EAP in several ways. Let’s say you observe erratic behavior or violations in policies or procedures from an otherwise valuable employee: unexplained absences, tardiness, or disappearances from work areas, for example. First, you can contact the EAP as a resource to help you find the right way to speak to the employee about the issue. You also can remind the worker about the EAP and let him know it can help him get back on track by providing techniques and support for dealing with whatever problem is resulting in this behavior. The worker can choose to make use of the service or not.
If the negative performance continues or escalates, however, and you believe there’s a root cause the EAP could help the worker address, you can refer the worker to the EAP as part of a disciplinary action. The employee can still refuse to use it, but that refusal could have consequences according to the company’s policies and procedures. For example, you might discipline a worker for confrontational behavior and give him the option of seeking anger management help through the EAP as an additional resource. As part of such an agreement, he must sign a release giving the EAP permission to report back to you that he is (or is not) keeping his appointments. The worker still has the right to refuse to use the EAP, but he would face the consequences for the unresolved performance issues.
Companywide services. Companies can also turn to the EAP for companywide training or issue management. Training might address U.S. Department of Transportation rules and regulations, mental health concerns, stress, addictions, interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, workplace violence, sexual harassment, safety, and emergency preparedness. It can help a company communicate with or support its workers in difficult times, such as during mergers or layoffs or after an employee’s death or workplace accident. The EAP also can help the company address problems among smaller groups of workers.
There are a few things an EAP can’t do, however. Though it can help a worker or a supervisor individually address issues that may lead to a conflict between them, it does not formally mediate such a conflict. Further, though it can address issues such as workplace violence, discrimination, and sexual harassment on a companywide basis, typically it does not formally investigate or mediate individual cases of violence, discrimination, or harassment. The EAP operates as an outside partner and assists the company in resolving individual or organizational issues; it never interferes with company policies and procedures.
Federal and state laws govern the confidentiality and privacy of what employees or their family members discuss with an EAP, but the laws make a couple of important exceptions, which an EAP professional should make the user aware of during the first visit or phone call. The first exception is if an EAP user verbalizes an intent to harm himself or others. By law, the EAP professional must contact the appropriate parties to prevent that harm from taking place. The second exception is when the EAP user verbalizes that he or she has harmed, or intends to harm, a child or a vulnerable adult such as someone who is elderly or mentally challenged. Again, the EAP professional is required by law to take steps to prevent harm from occurring.
In the more than 25 years that I have been an EAP professional, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to involve others to prevent harm from occurring in the workplace. It usually involved a quick and confidential call to human resources, security, or, in some instances, the owner of the company. Only the people in key company leadership positions who needed to know were aware of the steps taken to prevent harm.
A Source of Support
You only need to look around or speak to co-workers to know that a variety of troubles can be on the minds of employees and their family members. People are swamped with responsibilities as they raise their children, care for elderly parents, support siblings going through rough times, or keep their finances straight. These are all issues an EAP can help people address.
If I had to choose between working for a company that has an EAP and one that does not, I would pick the one with the EAP. Companies with EAPs give employees and their family members an outlet to resolve a much wider range of issues than any single human resource professional would be able to handle. Issues that don’t get resolved can linger, consume mental energy, and compromise a worker’s focus and safety.
Alison Brown is CEO of Encompass (Grand Rapids, Mich.), which provides global EAP services and consultations. Visit www.encompasseap.com or contact her at 800/788-8630 or abrown@encompass.us.com.
EAPs in the Scrapyard
By Diana Mota
Jerry Sjogren, safety director for E.L. Harvey & Sons (Westborough, Mass.), remembers why his company implemented an employee assistance program about 10 years ago: “People were coming to me with major problems I wasn’t equipped to handle.” He worked with E.L. Harvey’s human resources department to select and hire an EAP provider, the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Worcester, Mass.), that helps him as well as everyone else in the company with issues that might affect workplace safety and performance. He and several other scrap company managers say EAPs improve their employees’ lives, which has to be good for business.
The confidentiality of an EAP is an asset because some people feel there’s a stigma to using mental health or counseling services, Sjogren says. “The attitude is to ‘suck it up’” and just deal with your problems, he says. When employees know it’s confidential, however, they are more likely to access the program’s counseling services if they need them. “We never know who’s using [the EAP] unless there’s a serious problem,” says Harry Garber, director of safety and training for Grossman Iron & Steel Co. (St. Louis). For example, if an employee had a substance abuse problem that affected his or her work, the EAP might direct the employee into an in-patient drug rehabilitation program, causing him or her to miss work. That’s a circumstance under which the company would need to get notified that the employee is seeking help. Like many EAPs, Grossman’s started 40 years ago as a substance abuse program. Now it’s a more comprehensive program from H&H Health Associates (St. Louis) that includes child care referrals, weight loss support, and nutrition information.
These managers also tout the EAP’s accessibility. “It gives people a place to go when they’re in crisis. Employees and their family members can utilize it 24/7 for whatever reason,” Sjogren says. Further, he says, “I know if we have a crisis, [EAP counselors] are poised to come out immediately.” They take pains to regularly promote the benefit to employees and their families. E.L. Harvey has its provider’s phone number posted around its facility and hands out refrigerator magnets and pocket cards with the number for easy reference. Grossman “talks it up” regularly and has its service provider visit the facility during the firm’s annual family safety event in October as well as every second quarter, Garber says.
An EAP gives supervisors tools for managing workplace issues or intervening when they notice a sudden change in behavior, such as a slip in attendance or appearance, the managers say. “All supervisors are trained [by the EAP] in how to recognize signs of employees under the influence” of drugs or alcohol, says Candy Underhill, vice president of human resources for Mervis Industries (Danville, Ill.), which has had an EAP for 20 years. (Supervisors can refer employees to the EAP to get help for such a problem; they cannot require them to use the EAP, however.) The EAP helps supervisors in other ways, she adds. “Employees tend to bring [their] problems to supervisors as an excuse for poor performance.” The supervisor can direct the worker to the EAP to get help for the problem, which “takes that issue out of the equation” when assessing future performance. The EAP is there to support the company with all types of issues, she adds. “If we have a situation that impacts our employees—whether it’s work-related or not—they come in and do crisis management.”
That said, Mervis has learned that it’s important to find an EAP provider the employees can trust. “Our provider is someone our employees can relate to and talk with,” Underhill says. “We didn’t have that with the first one. [Our employees] didn’t have the trust; the confidence level wasn’t there,” so they were not using it. The company now uses Creative Care Management (Chicago) to oversee and coordinate services for each of its locations.
What problems at these companies have been solved or averted due to use of the EAP? “It’s one of those things you may never know,” Sjogren says. Each year he receives aggregated charts and graphs regarding its use—and he prefers to keep even that information confidential. “You’d have a hard time identifying anyone from the information. It’s just so I know it’s working and being utilized.” Underhill receives similar reports periodically that show 14 percent to 18 percent of the company’s employees use its EAP. Garber acknowledges he could probably receive a usage report, but he’s satisfied with a verbal confirmation from his EAP provider that “it’s well used.” The bottom line, these managers say, is that EAPs show employees that these companies care about them and their families.
Diana Mota is associate editor of Scrap.
Employee assistance programs can give employers and employees the resources to manage personal and work circumstances that affect workplace safety and productivity.