Time to split ‘wellbeing’ and EAPs
Time to split ‘wellbeing’ and EAPs
At some point in the employee wellbeing revolution, having a wellbeing strategy and having an EAP has become synonymous.
When organisations are asked about what it’s doing for employees, they’ll now often just point to their EAP provision: the ‘catch-all’ and ‘fix-all’ for wellbeing. Reports indicating high levels of EAP usage are used as evidence of the success of awareness-raising and access to wellbeing support.
On the one hand, it’s a tribute to the impact of EAPs. Employers trust the professionalism of their EAP provider. But the shift in attitudes has had a serious effect on the ability of EAPs to focus on core strengths, the quality of clinical services and delivering the best clinical outcomes. Seeing the EAP as a holistic wellbeing solution has meant demands on providers to deliver an umbrella service, to provide services in everything from financial wellbeing to menopause advice. So EAPs have needed to invest and develop in areas well outside of their area of expertise.
The blurring of wellbeing means a bigger problem for the market, organisations and employees. The reality is that EAPs are only signposted and used as a reactive service when there is already an issue, and more often a serious one involving mental illness. A rise in EAP usage isn’t a sign of successful wellbeing strategies, but their failure.
Wellbeing support isn’t an EAP, it should be there, everywhere, in different forms, before any kind of crisis point is reached; a proactive strategy that includes advice and help around issues like sleep, diet and nutrition, good mental health — and perhaps most of all, in terms of job design and workplace culture, what makes for ‘good work’ to maximise feelings of belonging and minimise the stress and angst.
Maybe it sounds like an odd message from the chair of EAPA UK: don’t spend your entire wellbeing budget on an EAP. But we need to be clear about what EAPs and EAP providers are. They were set up to have a positive effect on the mental health of the workforce, for employers and employees, and not as a profit-making scheme.
This kind of integrity and viability can only happen if EAPs are able to keep to their fundamental purpose and role, focused on positive clinical outcomes for individuals who reach out to the service.
Karl Bennett, chair, EAPA UK (Employee Assistance Professionals Association), www.eapa.org.uk