Future proofing your EAP

Future proofing your EAP

In this second article from Tracey Paxton, EAPA executive board member and director of operations for Vivup EAP, she talks about how harnessing technology to create a fully integrated support system and h, with the EAP at the heart of it, is the best way to safeguard this vital service for the future of your organisation.

The challenge of how to increase employee engagement with EAPs is a very important one for organisations, but the next stage to retaining this highly valuable service is how to future-proof it properly.

After all, issues such as mental health, stress and anxiety are being increasingly recognised and show no signs of going away any time soon. If we all want to ensure that access to confidential counselling, as well as a plethora of other benefits, is kept going in an organisation, it’s important to consider how to plan ahead so that employees continue to engage with this service.

In a previous article, I talked about how to increase employee engagement with EAPs in the here and now. But how should we carry on doing so in the future?

Technology

Senior leaders who want to increase EAP engagement and safeguard it for the future should put themselves in the shoes of those who may be requiring these services, and consider how they would feel most comfortable doing so. Someone who is ready to seek help from a counselling service is generally in a vulnerable state, and would not choose to make the call in the middle of the working day in a busy office. They would prefer to access this service in such a way as to not attract attention, and which is easy for them to do.

Research shows technology actually increases engagement with an EAP from 10 to 30 per cent. Therefore, a great way of future proofing your organisation’s EAP is to ensure you have harnessed tech effectively so that employees are able to reach help via multiple channels. Consider different platforms and apps that will enable the whole workforce to be able to access help, preferably in the privacy of their own home or somewhere where they feel safe.

Embedding a sense of wellbeing

How to get more employees to access their EAP is a perennial head-scratcher for organisations. While take-up at company level is relatively high, engagement with users remains fairly low. That may be because EAPs have been seen in the past as being a service that is available for those who need help – essentially a ‘reactive’ service, in other words, rather than something that can offer general support. Those people who are feeling so up against it that they are prepared to ask for help are generally a small fraction of those who would probably benefit.

This divergence in take-up may present a problem in the future as organisations look upon their EAP with a chilly accountant’s eye, equating low take-up with low value.

The answer is to create a culture where staff health and wellbeing are actively encouraged and embedded, therefore encouraging higher take-up of available services such as an EAP. In this way, we can also help people who might not have asked for help by fostering a culture of general self-care rather than only asking for help when it’s really, really needed. What you want is for staff to feel empowered to think: ‘I am feeling a little stressed and a little low. I think I might engage with my EAP today, and ask if they have any tips as to how I can make myself feel better.’

So how can an organisation embed a holistic health and wellbeing culture at work?

The answer is to use the EAP to do the job. An EAP can often provide the centralised platform which provides a wealth of information and support for staff, from psychological wellbeing to physical fitness, plus financial and legal assistance. It’s very important that mental health is fully integrated within all these other strands of support so it is seen as being just as important. By ‘joining up’ these things, emotional support becomes part of the package. It becomes as normal to access help with mental health as it does to seek assistance with financial matters, say, or ask how to improve your fitness.

This is what we mean when we talk about ‘360 support’. EAPs should not operate in isolation from other support systems available in an organisation. Only by being fully integrated, can engagement increase in an organisation from bottom to top.