Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Employee Assistance Programmes

Three steps to getting the most out of an EAP

by Sally O' Reilly 18 Feb 2010
by Sally O' Reilly 18 Feb 2010

1. Market the EAP effectively to employees

The provider should give you a clear implementation plan, with pre-promotional planning, and talk to you about how they will go about  implementing the first phase. 

Ensure the service is widely launched, then advertised via the most appropriate medium for the workforce – posters, email, intranet, podcast, webinar.

Also make sure that you have buy-in from top management and that all  managers are aware of the service and its benefits, and communicate this to employees when needed.

2. Make sure you get feedback and support from the EAP provider

A provider should offer:



  • 24/7 telephone support and information.
  • Management support to assist managers to deal with specific situations; critical incident support for the organisation and its employees when faced with unpleasant and traumatic workplace incidents.
  • Statistical data – management reports which will typically show patterns of usage, hot issues and departmental or geographical variations, enabling service adjustment if needed.

3. Assess the value of the EAP to the employer and to employees 
 
The first step, as discussed above, is to determine exactly why you are buying an EAP, the second step is to establish a data recording system that will  measure the EAP against your purchasing intent.

Set up SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Time-based) service level agreements at the outset of the contract, and conduct regular performance reviews with your provider.

Ask for three and six monthly updates. Find out what other data they can produce. Stress that you want to measure this as an investment.

Objective measures to assess the EAP

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) absence management annual survey provides a clear indication of the impact of absence on  your organisational running costs. 

CORE (Clinical Outcome Routine Evaluation) is the most widely used tool for measuring the effectiveness of counselling. Individual user feedback based on structured questions can be a valuable aide in evaluating the impact of the service on the workforce.

Some organisations include questions about the EAP in their annual staff survey and this can provide evidence of return on investment (ROI) in a number of ways, depending on the way the questions are posed.

One of the mistakes in measuring ROI is to simply ask how many people use the service. The real ROI is the difference the service makes to your organisation and this may be qualitative rather than quantitative.

(With thanks to the Employee Assistance Professionals Association and Right Corecare.)

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avatar
Sally O' Reilly

previous post
Employing ex-soldiers in the workplace
next post
Banking HR professionals don’t have the clout to influence pay or reward for high earners

You may also like

Half of businesses helping staff with cost of...

24 Jan 2023

What’s driving the increase in EAP usage?

12 Jan 2023

EAPs reporting ‘drastic’ surge in demand as employees...

11 Jan 2023

Making the case for supporting mental ill health...

9 Jan 2023

HR should prioritise wellbeing in financial crisis

30 Nov 2022

Personnel Today Awards 2022: E.ON and Edenred take...

15 Nov 2022

Demand for mental health support continuing to surge

25 Aug 2022

Employee assistance programmes step up response to Ukraine...

13 Apr 2022

Supporting employees following redundancy: a guide for HR

28 Mar 2022

Is there room for love in the 9...

11 Feb 2022

  • The HR Bundle: Your one-stop guide to building a successful global HR Department PROMOTED | Get your hands on Deel’s free HR bundle...Read more
  • The Benefits of an Employee Assistance Programme PROMOTED | EAPs support employees in a range of ways...Read more
  • Intergenerational working and how to manage up and down the generations PROMOTED | The benefits and challenges of intergenerational workplaces...Read more
  • Bereavement in the workplace: How training can help HR get it right PROMOTED | HR professionals play an essential role...Read more
  • UK workforce mental wellbeing needs PROMOTED | The mental wellbeing support employers are providing misses the mark...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2023

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2023 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+