What is Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Benefit & Example

Summary: The employee assistance program is for employees to tackle personal and work-related issues and ensure higher productivity. What are the other benefits of these programs. Find out in the article below!

Employees often go through stressful situations like partner abuse, anxiety, or physical assault that might affect their professional life. This might result in lack of concentration at work, increased absenteeism, degraded health, and so on. All this can lead to huge loss for your organization. Therefore, it is important to help employees tackle these issues by incorporating an employee assistance program.

Through EAP programs, employees can deal with issues like financial losses, childcare, divorce issues, etc., through proper guidance. By overcoming these issues, employees can become more productive at work. Also, absenteeism will be decreased, and a positive work culture will be created.

Learn more about the benefits of EAP programs in the article below.

What is the Employee Assistance Program (EAP)?

Employee assistance program, EAP is a type of program created by an organization to help employees resolve their personal problems that might be impacting their professional life. Generally, experts are hired to provide employees with the right solution to deal with their problems.

Some of the common issues that are addressed through the EAP program include relationship issues, childcare, financial problems, mental health issues, alcohol abuse, etc. These programs are often delivered in the form of counselling that may take place in phone call, live session, virtual seminars, and so on.

Investing in employee assistance programs helps organizations to keep their employees physically and mentally healthy thereby boosting employees’ productivity and efficiency at work.

Suggested Read: Top Employee Recognition Ideas

What are the Examples of Employee Assistance?

With employee assistance programs, an employer can aid employees in several ways to improve their overall well-being. From personal and financial problems to any major professional issues, here are some of the situations in which professional employee assistance can be useful.

• Family Concerns: These concerns are often related to divorce, separation, childcare, parenting, child adoption assistance, etc.
• Relationship Conflicts: The conflicts are related to social or romantic relationships, partner abuse, separation, relationship building, etc.
• Substance Abuse: Employees often need assistance to address and resolve issues such as alcohol abuse, drug addiction, etc.
• Traumatic Events: In the events, such as death of a loved one, physical or sexual assault, the EAP program can help employees overcome positively.
• Mental Health Concerns: These concerns include issues like stress, anxiety, depression, behavioral issues, and so on.
• Skills Development: Under this category, employees can get guidance and training in the skills needed for a specific job profile.

Suggested Read: Importance of Emotional Intelligence at Workplace

Benefits of Employee Assistance Program

Employees assistance programs can help in improving the employee’s retention rate and also creating a favorable work environment for them. In addition to that, there are several other benefits of implementing EAP for both organizations and employees such as-

• Improved Productivity: Employees dealing with any type of personal issues might find it difficult to stay productive at work. With an EAP program, their issues are addressed and resolved, thereby helping them to focus on work.
• Positive Work Culture: Creating a healthy work environment is essential for the well-being of employees. With EAP, all their issues are addressed to reduce stress levels, thereby creating a supportive work culture for them. Further, details shared by employees under this program remain confidential and encourage employees to address their issues without hesitation.
• Decrease Turnover Rate: Increased turnover rates might impact organizational revenue and market value. However, by addressing and resolving issues, a company can make employees feel valued and stay motivated at work. Thereby reducing the overall turnover rate.
• Provides Assistance 24X7: Most of the employee assistance program providers work 24×7 to aid the employees regarding any issues. This allows employers to help employees even outside the office hours for their betterment.
• Reduce Absenteeism: When employees do not feel physically and mentally fit, they tend to take more leaves to maintain their well-being. However, when they are provided with the proper counselling, their health improves, and they are more likely to come to the office regularly.

How Does EAP Work?

Companies often hire EAP service providers that have an extensive network of counsellors, nutritionists, childcare experts, and so on. When the EAP is implemented in an organization, the counsellors assist employees with their specific problems and provide necessary resolutions.

The programs are either delivered through a phone call, live counselling, seminar, webinars, etc. The communication taking place between the EAP provider and the employee remains confidential. Employee assistance program not only covers the employees but also their spouse and other dependents.

Additionally, these programs are also inclusive of a free library of resources and self-help tools to assist employees with their issues. These programs are delivered free of cost to employees.

How to Implement an Employee Assistance Program?

To successfully implement an employee assistance program, you need to follow the steps-

• Create a Budget Estimate: You need to decide the amount you can spend on employee assistance programs. For this, you can calculate the fee per employee.
• Choose the Services Type: Next, you need to identify the type of services to be included, such as webinars, live sessions, on-call assistance, seminars, and so on.
• Select the EAP Provider: Once you have decided the employee assistance services type, you need to choose an EAP service provider that matches your budget and requirement.
• Conduct Internal Training: After the successful signing of the agreement, you need to train your internal team on the EAP program before launching it.
• Launch the Program: Lastly, after the training, the program is launched successfully to address employees’ issues and providing solutions to resolve them.

Suggested Read: Roles and Responsibilities of HR Managers

What is the Cost of an Employee Assistance Program?

The cost of an employee assistance program depends on several factors, such as the company’s size, EAP provider’s agreement, and the assistance type. The company can decide whether it wants to invest in a single type of program or different types of programs.

Therefore, the cost is never fixed and varies depending on the above-mentioned factors.

The Role of Software in Employee Assistance Program

Using software can help you in keeping and maintaining track of all the employee assistance programs running in your organizations. Employee assistance program software can help you track the billable hours for your providers and prepare the bills accordingly.

With this software, you can also send invoices directly to EAP providers. Further, you can also maintain the record of all the employees availing the different types of EAP services for the organization’s records.

Conclusion

Challenging issues like stress, anxiety, or traumatic events often impact people’s professional life severely. In such circumstances, they find it difficult to concentrate on work and often get restless at their workplace.

However, by incorporating an EAP in your organization, you can help your employees to cope with stressful situations and stay productive at work.

FAQs