EAPs: Helping Job-stressed Employees at Risk for Stroke

People with high stress jobs have a 22 percent higher risk of stroke than those with low stress jobs. That’s what an examination of six studies concluded after following 138,782 people for 17 years. That is a big number. And that increases credibility in my view. What’s high stress? Answer: Time pressure, mental load, and coordination burdens. That's what the study focused on. Researchers to see physical labor as producing the same degree of mental stress. EAP Impact: Create services and programs which 1) give people more control over their work. Become a “control over your work expert” in your organization to reduce health problems and health risk by doing so. These at-risk jobs include nursing aides, waitresses, service industry positions among others. Anywhere people are faced with unpredictable demands and very little ability to have any control over when, how much, and the details of how they going to do that work create inordinate stress. Who in your organization matches this sort of occupational profile? There's the value added proposition. My suggestion is to forget the brown-bag seminar approach. Make it more programmatic than that. For example, invite employees into the EAP as self-referrals to discuss their job stress and discover how more control can be instituted. The answers you find may save a life.  Test your assumptions, ideas, and strategies. That is what these medical researchers are concluding. EAPs are in the most strategic place to make this difference. http://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2015/10/101515_job.stress.php

EAP Providers: Keep Talking about Emotional Intelligence

Don't get bored talking about emotional intelligence. The company EAP is in the ideal position to train extensively on this subject. The rationale in my view is not so much educating people about what emotional intelligence is but discovering rationales for developing training, opportunities, and exercises to help employees and supervisors acquire more emotional intelligence to increase productivity, improve workplace harmony, gain cooperation, and help maximize organizational productivity.. Do you have an EAP Employee Newsletter? Perfect spot to talk about this stuff. I just included this article in September 2013 issue of Work Life Excel and FrontLine Employee. This is the kind of content that I am talking about. Here's a training program in PowerPoint that you may want to take advantage of. "Emotional Intelligence for Supervisor" - own the training program. Great content for your workplace wellness newsletter.
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Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions and to use this understanding to have more satisfying and productive relationships. Anyone can have a better “EI” by practicing a few skills. Here are some: (1) Try encouraging others to speak first and give them your full attention. (2) Eliminate the idea of good and bad personality types at work. Instead, look for the part of their personality that represents positivity and is well-meaning. (3) If there’s friction between you and a coworker, look at where you may be coming up short in communicating and address that first. (4) The next time you find yourself focused solely on winning or on retribution, take a step back and look for ways to achieve your goal that also benefit others.

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Powerful Strategy for Traditional EAP Impact and Relevance: ONBOARDING

Have you heard of the term "onboarding"? If you are not familiar with this term, which is part of the human resources lexicon, chances are you are NOT maximizing your ability to become a more highly integrated, relevant, and indispensable part of your work organization. And, your EAP may be at risk as a result.

Onboarding is a way to socialize employees who are new to the organization. It is a recognized procedure and purposely designed system to help new employees become knowledgeable about the organization and understand the many cultural nuances and important behaviors to practice that will help the new employee be successful. Part of the onboarding process is always to meeting effective and important employees or managers within the organization--the inside players, who can point the way toward the employee's success.

If you think that this post is about making sure you conduct EAP orientations for new employees, it's not. Onboarding is much more. It is about employees meeting YOU--the EAP personally--where you can engage them individually and COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DESTROY myths and misconceptions about the EAP that are certain to permeate the employee's awareness about what you do and who you are. You get first crack at establishing a relationship with the employee and immunize them against counterproductive beliefs concerning the program, particularly, lack of confidentiality.

You can make an impact on this problem without a one-on-one interview with each new employee. To the degree possible, you need to figure out how to make this happen. I am working on a powerpoint video, web course called 25 Ways the EAP Can Help. When it is done, you should get it. And you should make it a part of your "onboarding" requirement for every employee. Then, watch the impact of its use.

I think you need to use this product IF you can't personally meet with every employee. In the future, I will make a web course out of it with 25 questions and a Certificate of Completion. It will powerfully and very simply, drive home the value of EAP in ways employees have not typically considered. It will improve top-of-mind visibility and EAP utilization, probably overnight.

You will be able to directly email the link to this movie to any new employee or hundreds of new employees and the exact same time if you have an email list for your use. 

Okay, enough preaching. Go to this link below on Wikipedia and read about "ONBOARDING". When you do, I want you to keep this thought in your mind: How is this process of onboarding relevant to EAPs and is there a role for the EAP in being closely associated with it? What is the value to the EAP for being included beyond employee orientation sessions, that may or may not be attended by every employee? What might employees learn from the EAP during an "onboarding" meeting that may cause them to return to the EAP in the future. How could onboarding help dispel myths about the EAP that would increase its utilization? How could onboarding keep our EAP from closing down, being farmed out to managed care, or severely cut? How could onboarding make the EAP a more inclusive part of the work organization's culture? OK, now ready all about Onboarding

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onboarding}

EAP Utilization Tip: Utilization Review & Hospital Social Workers

How many hospitals are in your town? Medical social workers or utilization review nurses might be the busiest occupation on the planet with the most stress. The cut-backs in hospitals and the personnel shortages they face, have made social workers busier than ever--that's if they have not been fired yet. Some hospitals have let all of their hospital social workers go. They have replaced the bulk with utilization review nurses who line up support and medical help post-discharge.

They could use some help. And they would love to refer employees from the company or companies you serve who've ended up in the hospital for one reason or another. You could lighten their load and get the utilization credit for your program. Remember family members could use EAP services too, so make sure your statistics include "employees impacted" by EAP services.

In many instances, medical social workers perform the same kind of  "brokerage" services for patients and their family members that EAPs do. (Brokerage is arranging services for the client without the client's involvement and then passing them off to that service or agency for continuing care or services.) Medical social workers interface with hospice services, meals on wheels, visiting nurse agencies, home health care, medical equipment companies, admission departments of nursing homes and assisted living facilities, social security disability and retirement offices of local government, many other services. If you have done this work as a medical social worker or hospital utilization nurse, you know that burnout is high. You're on the phone constantly.  Help these hospital professionals by letting them know you exist. When a patient is admitted to the hospital, the EAP (that's you) can be contacted to help arrange support or other services. They instantly become a new EAP client referred to your program. Note that you will need to reinforce your availability for assisting the hospital with patients who are also employees of the companies you serve. I would arrange six monthly letters to the person in the hospital who is head of insurance utilization. Send them monthly regardless. After that, your utilization will increase. Let me know what happens. This is a win-win for everyone, including your EAP client, especially.

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EAP Utilization Tip: Partner with Local Gyms & Exercise Merchants

Gold’s Gym and other franchises are privately owned. This means you probably have opportunities in your town to negotiate with such gyms to get free passes for your EAP clients. You'll boost worksite wellness, too. This is a very cool draw to improve your EAP utilization, and it works. I've done it.


The Gold’s Gym in our area (Arlington Virginia) agreed to give us one month passes for clients who we felt needed to take better advantage of opportunities to improve their health. Good preventative health means pursuing an exercise program, and what better way to get started than with a one-month free pass to a local gym. Word of mouth that the EAP offers clients free passes to a local gym can increase your EAP utilization. It doesn't take much. Just make this a quiet way in which your EAP helps employees. Don't promote it. Simply let it happen and watch the vote of confidence your EAP will soon get.

Imagine being able to hand a free monthly pass to an employee suffering with depression. You know reactive depression and milder depressive disorders benefit from exercise, so visit the local gym. Meet with the decision maker and claim the high ground on this improving the EAP utilization strategy.

EAPs Can Help Alcoholic Employees on Disability and Others

If you work for a company of any appreciable size, there is probably a disability insurance policy in case employees get sick or injured to the extent they can’t work for an extended period of time. Some organizations are progressive with their disability insurance, while some still live in the dark ages. 

The most progressive insurance plans cover physical injuries and illness, emotional disabilities, and yes, acute chronic alcoholism. The state of South Carolina, for example, covers alcoholism or any condition caused by alcoholism or alcohol abuse for a maximum of 24 months. 

By the way, did you know that prior to the ADA, the federal government recognized acute alcoholism as a disease without restrictions on alcoholism, but after the ADA and its language covering alcoholism, many changes were made that were actually detrimental to the acceptance of alcoholism as a disease? 

Go to the American Society of Addiction Medication, ASAM.org, website and read the policy statement and response to the language of the ADA and how adamantly opposed this organization is to the EEOC interpretation of the law, which increased discrimination against alcoholism in its belief. 

The ADA did not help alcoholics, they claim. It made discrimination worse in many ways. You will stunned at the insight afforded by this statement.  

For example, did you know that the Federal government, Office of Personnel Management issued regulations that "required" use of the EAP for employees suspected of having alcohol problems prior to the institution of any disciplinary action. If the EAP was not used, the disciplinary action would be considered illegal and void. That changed after the ADA.

Sorry for the digression --- Many physically ill patients retire on disability with acute illnesses associated with acute chronic alcoholism. The smartest organizations with disability insurance that cover alcoholism and mental disorders seek to aggressively document that the patient is participating in required treatment to arrest the illness and manage it successfully. You EAP can play this role and possibly save the employer a fortune. You'll have to feel your way into the benefits policies and administration to see if there is a role for you to play in this regard, but it can boost utilization and make your program more valuable. 

The EAP can play a key role in helping these employees who get sick or are injured, and qualify for disability insurance. Only an EA professional is proactive enough to assist employees in dealing with the psychosocial aspects of illness or injury effectively. This could conceivably assist these employees in getting back to work or in having meaningful lives. If you make headway in this area, let me know! I will make a post about it and it could encourage other EAPs to do the same and be more valuable.