Functional Alcoholism: ("The Drinking Doesn't Bother Me")

“Functional alcoholic” is a destructive term that everybody has heard.  Generally, the term is used by those who are aware of the alcoholic’s drinking pattern, but wish to avoid feeling responsible for confronting it by denying its problematic impact.

There is no such thing as a functional alcoholic just like there is no such thing as functional cancer.  This term is an example of enabling. It is a term of convenience created by enablers. In a sense, all alcoholics -- if they’re alive -- are functional.  It’s a matter of degree.  This term is destructive because it helps the alcoholic avoid being confronted and it works for the enabler quite well.

Functional alcoholic means the coworkers behavior doesn’t bother you.  Indeed, others  may see the same alcoholic as quite dysfunctional -- particularly family members.  Don’t use this term to describe alcoholics.

Do you need a supervisor or employee substance abuse awareness training for employees? Visit the two hour DOT Drug and Alcohol Training Program for Supervisors for Reasonable Suspicion at http://workexcel.net/reasonable_susp.hml

Some EAP Reports are Worth Repeating: 2008 Employer's Guide to Employee Assistance Programs

I bet you missed what I think is an excellent study that included all the right players who help develop and write it: The 2008 Employer's Guide to Employee Assistance Programs

My only concern is that after 40 years, we are still arguing in this report about the definition of an employee assistance program.  This was one of its recommendations and a sub-committee was formed to advance the answer. There lies the problem. Too many market forces "have had their way" with the definition of an EAP, to the point where the abuse of the original concept has nearly been lost. Too many different entities now claim rightful ownership to their own definition. How does one put this genie back in the bottle?

Promote Your EAP Service By Getting There First

Keep a cover sheet handy. On that one page write in the message section: This is "John Smith, CEAP from Middle Valley EAP Services (or whatever). We have an expert on staff regarding the (subject) related to the (INCIDENT) that has just occurred.... This professional can speak on air and answer questions regarding....this matter. (Include a resume behind the fax cover.) Phone us at ....... We are available to your listeners or viewers or can answer questions."

What you are looking at above is the way to communicate with television and radio stations in your area who will put you on live to answer pertinent questions about news events occurring in your community. When breaking news happens, they scramble for experts. And they often grab the wrong folks, those with less knowledge than you...or people who may say things that completely eliminate the idea of phoning an EAP, where in fact that is the best step to take.

These could trauma incidents related to disasters, shootings, court decisions, layoffs, or almost any sort of newsworthy event where your expertise--whether organizational or clinical--could provide that news outlet with a valuable way to educate its listeners or viewers.

Keep a list handy in your purse or pocket of the key phone numbers or fax numbers of the local TV and radio stations. If you are driving down the road and learn of some major incident on the radio (or no matter where you are, head for the fax...or head for the nearest KINKOS and hit the button!

RESULT: You will help people, improve your own EAP's utilization, promote the EA profession in general, and dispel myths about EAPs. And of course, gain free publicity...and their AIN'T NOTHIN' WRONG WITH THAT!

Message of Recovery Pamphlets from NCADD

If you work in the EAP field, you know about AA, and if you visit AA meetings, whether you are in recovery or not, you know those personal stories - the core of what happens at AA--sharing strength, hope, and recovery - works. A desire to stop drinking is influenced by the messages of others.  Powerful recovery stories are also in special brochures published by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence - visit their website or phone to learn more. Ask about the Personal Stories of Recovery series brochures. Make them available to EAP clients. The stories in each pamphlet are designed to target the pain and stir "self-diagnosis" in those who use. A decision to seek recovery and sobriety may follow. No, it's not the taking an AA meeting to someone, but is about taking the story. One of these brochures could be the "thing" triggers the decision to save one's life.

WorkExcel.com's Higher EAP Utilization Strategy

When employees don't use the EAP, it is often for a hidden underlying reason you may not of thought of.... The EA professional forgets that every job, including theirs, is about marketing. EAP skills could be said...to come second. For EAPs (not "faux" EAPs associated with some managed care firms) that are CT-driven, this High Utilization Formula. If you're missing a piece of it, you missing element of synergy -- something that can help your program really "wring the rag" to maximize client utilization. It takes "value added" to a whole new level.

Beyond supervisor training and employee orientation: 1) Promote confidentiality continuously to retard attrition of the perception by employees that the program may not be confidential. This is a natural phenomenon caused by fear. It does not go away. Your EAP won't escape it.

If you do not market confidentiality via written communications and frequently have it mentioned by key stake holders talking the program, then you will lose the perception that the program is confidential. No EAP is immune from this phenomenon.

2) The EAP should be a voluntary mention or a formal part (as needed and appropriate) in every "performance improvement plan"

3) The EAP should be part of risk management integration with referrals to help injured employees on Workers' Compensation to get help and address many issues associated with injury and recovery -- many are psychosocial/psycho-organizational.

4) The EAP should grow its influence by making recommendations to management about how to best use its services to reduce behavioral risk exposures. This should be done with a "risk mapping report" annually produced by EAP staff pooling their ideas about unmet and emerging issues associated with behavioral risk in the organization.

5) There should be a monthly newsletter to supervisors to educate them about using the EAP properly in supervision--one that serves to promote the EAP to supervisors as a positive productivity tool to help troubled employees and deal on the job behavior problems, while dispelling myths;

6) There should be a monthly--heavens...not quarterly!--newsletter of 2 pages, never 4, given to employees to educate them about workplace wellness topics, personal wellness, communication, and goal attainment, etc. -- and it should find its way home with employees and include articles that benefit family members, while also promoting the EAP.

Those articles should short, punchy, effective educational (leave out the recipes and jokes) and tightly written so the whole thing gets read, not discarded; 7) a robust EAP website with audio/visual interactive, especially video content on workplace wellness topics should be in place that employees can access 24/7 but each one mentions the EAP at the end, or near by;

8) EAP posters should exist in the organization that are in strategic places and removed and replaced by other posters at least every six weeks just prior to becoming "invisible" to passers-by (again); Don't buy them off the shelf. Use a simply MS Publsher Program to create your own and a color printer.

9) Family members should be seen by EAPs, if needed.

10) Key referral points in the community--courts for arrests, juvenile justice, information and referral agencies, emergency rooms, hospital social work departments, urgent care clinics, etc should all have your EAP's phone number in their rolodex so when employees come to those locations they get referred to the EAP by these external sources (send your newsletter to these program directors so they remember you when the time comes.) This is is about the EAP engaging in follow-up....I will throw in #11. I call it the 11th EAP commandment: Never let management tell you, "But EAPs don't do that." HR professionals have become victims in recent years of the blind leading the blind. Few know what an EAP is really all about. They've been propagandized to and been given false models of EAPs are--models that serve the insurance industry, not employees or the profession. Fight it and you'll fight for your employees and the profession. Maybe someday there will be 8000 members of EAPA, like their used to be.

What the Real Medical Experts on Marijuana Say About Legalization

Are there real experts on the health and mental health effects of marijuana or addiction that we can trust? Does anyone have the most credibility of all professions? Think about it. Who would this be? Well of course, it would be doctors--medical doctors who have no ax to grind, but who treat marijuana addicts and other addicts of drug addiction day in and day out. We should believe them more than the research sponsored and paid for drug abuse advocacy groups. Indeed, the experts would be those educated medical professionals who see the truth everyday in the clinical setting. These are the medical doctors of the American Society on Addiction Medicine. Here is what they say collectively on the topic of legalization of marijuana, but you are not likely to hear this on the news.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine’s (ASAM) public policy statement on “Medical Marijuana,” clearly rejects smoking as a means of drug delivery. ASAM further recommends that “all cannabis, cannabis-based products and cannabis delivery devices should be subject to the same standards applicable to all other prescription medication and medical devices, and should not be distributed or otherwise provided to patients …” without FDA approval. ASAM also “discourages state interference in the federal medication approval process.” ASAM continues to support these policies, and has also stated that they do not “support proposals to legalize marijuana anywhere in the United States.”

Now you know what to point to and what group of educated professionals who are the real experts say. Well, if I am wrong, I can confidently say it is not the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Eyes Wide Open: Hold Managed Care Accountable in 2014!

Managed care companies are under siege financially. Their profits are down. There will be consolidation this year in 2014 and you will potentially see them cut back, cheapen, and/or provide fewer services. They'll be less helpful in going above and beyond the call of duty, and you may see lousier service than ever so they can save money. Learn more about what's ahead from the experts in the managed care industry  from this update and recording that follows. Most importantly, hold managed care faux-EAPs. http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/worldconference/Podcast/ZW14500_Mercurio_Carl_Interview.mp3

EAPs: Counseling While Rome Burns

I am always fascinated by EA professionals and what interests them. Over the past 13 years of blogging on EAP and behavioral exposures to financial loss in the workplace, clinical topics always get top views. Codependency, emotional intelligence in the workplace, relationships with the supervisor, depression, and stress management--they're all big attention-getters. Less so with issues affecting the survivability of the EAP field. This is puzzling to me. These issues include increasing EAP utilization, marketing EAPs, tightening up and enhancing relationships with management, and the one I think is the tippy-top issue --- demonstrating cost-benefit and how to prove the cost of troubled employees. These topics link to the survivability of the EAP field. And let me say that an obscure international EAP research study being conducted Sweden or Swiss researches is never going to produce the sea change needed for this field to relive its heyday. To that end, here is last week's WorkExcel E-Newsletter story which screams for EAPs  to pay attention to it. Get "into" proving your worth and confront faux-EAPs Know how to discuss cost-benefit and return on investment before the CFO comes knocking on your door.

Calculating the Cost of a Troubled Employee

http://www.tlnt.com/2014/01/07/calculating-the-costs-of-a-bad-or-under-performing-employee/

EAPs: How to Create An "End of Session" Health Tips Pitch

Three Health Tips To Conclude
Any Employee-Client Counseling Session

First of all... Happy New Year.

What three health tips would you offer an employee while walking him or her to the door following a meeting in your office to discuss a personal problem? Employee assistance programs, consider the following:

Whether you meet with an employee who is depressed, anxious, worried, traumatized, victimized, upset with a boss, or simply disgruntled, I bet you say at the end of the meeting, "Thanks John for coming in, and take care of yourself, ok?..."

These last 60 seconds often conclude with a handshake and well wishes, but they are an excellent time to insert healthful advice that will be remembered.

Taking a few minutes to develop a small, health tips "pitch" that you can deliver in the final moments. You'll benefit your client-employee and help the organization at the same time.

When I saw this article in Inc. Magazine, I thought about
all the times I've said good-bye to a client, but only offered a general statement of support when I could have amended the remaining seconds with some cool sticky tips.

Check it out. I think you will agree that the end of any counseling session includes an opportunity for a good-bye pitch and these few health tips below are the ones to include. (I'm a great believer in short, bite-sized help.)

 From the Inc. magazine article include: 1) don't skip breakfast; 2) eat a healthy 4 p.m. snack; and, 3) get enough sleep.

Why these three things? Any why not, "get some exercise?"....

See the article and consider how you can further support your client, while helping the organization's productivity at the same time...what an EAP is all about.

Three Health Habits that Drive Success.

When Organizational Development Specialists Become "Professional Counselor"

EA professionals who also provide organizational development (OD) consulting may be able to practice both professions equally well, but OD staff are not in the position to play the role of an employee assistance professional. The problem is that many do.  This is a risk issue for organizations. An OD staffer cannot counsel employees and promise confidentiality any more than a janitor. I have seen organizations where employees visit with OD staffers instead of the EAP. OD staff can increase risk for organizations when they attempt to resolve organizational, communication, or morale problems that have their roots in clinical or psychiatric problems. Organizations should take steps to examine the role other experts in the organization play, and be clear with these professionals regarding the scope of their duties and areas of expertise. OD specialists who derive personal meaning and job satisfaction from the counseling role with employee employees will create risk for organizations and the employees they seek to help.

Managing EAP Clients in Treatment

If you've recently admitted a client to some sort of addiction treatment program, there are few "touch points" you need to keep in mind. Understanding these touch points will allow you to achieve more treatment success with EAP clients and "score more points" with the value of your program for saving lives. It's nice when you can prove in black and white that you're saving lives with your EAP. After admitting a patient to treatment, you can count on resistance raising its ugly head after detox or without about a week of admission. This dynamic is fueled by the patient feeling better, comparing out of the disease, and a desire to drink again with assurance that the client can do it on his own.

Touch points:

1. Generally these points require updates and motivational assessments from the addiction treatment counselor: Admission, after detox, middle of intermediate care, discharge, starting day of aftercare, completion of aftercare, and any point within the next year where follow-up program discovers that the patient has moved below the four-day-per week participation in Alcoholics Anonymous.
2. You should be notified 24/7 with regard to the patient's thoughts and ruminations related to leaving AMA (Against Medical Advice)-- both AMA Ideation and actual AMA. When a patient begins talking about leaving against medical advice, a series of intervention steps occurs. Unfortunately most addition treatment program do not understand dynamics of motivation and leverage and therefore each employee from nurse, counselor, volunteer, doctor, or even the janitor  may take a crack at re-motivating the patient to stay. Unfortunately, each of these attempts reinforces the decision to leave. The first person to make an attempt at re-motivating the EAP client should be you. You can communicate leverage from the employer--generally assurance that the employee will be fired if he or she leaves treatment (we are assuming a formal referral to the EAP with a last chance agreement was involved in this sort of admission). If you are called last instead of first, the patient will have already practiced their "pitch" to leave and your job of convincing them to stay will be made more difficult. Use this EAP Handout Tip Sheet for following clients post discharge from your EAP office.

EAPs: Claim the High Ground on Helping Supervisors Learn Mentoring and Coaching Skills

Inc. Magazine had some interesting news recently that EAPs may want to pay attention to.

Research reported in the Harvard Business Review shows that the most likely reason employees leave their employers isn't money, it's a lack of coaching, mentorship, and training. I smell EAP opportunity here.

Can Employee Assistance Programming figure successfully into these problems and become a cost-benefiting financial solution to many the most expensive human resource problem organization's face?

Figure this one out, and you may endear yourself to the host organization big time rather than look like managed care bait come next budget cycle. Start with metrics and find out the turnover rate now. Then come up with your strategy for change.

Consider this pathway to expanding the value-added worth of your EAP. Take your EAP skills and abilities, and establish soft skills training directly related to relationship building, communication, coaching, mentorship, and helping supervisors bond effectively and listen aggressively to what there employees need. You have the experience to imagine an outline and pathway to growing these capabilities for supervisory and leadership staff.

Training (the third problem above) will always be hurdle because it is a time and resource issue, but the other two issues from this study are about relationships, bonding, listening, communication, listening, and other soft skills that EAPs are naturally better prepared to deliver to organizations. You're likely to increase supervisory referrals as a result--a nice pay off for better relationships and helping supervisors.

Who is offering mentor training and coaching training in organizations? It's time to claim the high ground. This is off the behavioral health care radar and their business model will never touch these problems.



Step #1: Gather information on turnover and figure the cost for your host organization. Step #2) In your annual behavioral risk mapping report that I have encouraged in past posts, present your arguments for adding these tow curriculum opportunities. Justify the cost. Two years later, measure impact.

Don't forget to present a paper at EAPA. You'll fill the room. Also try a SHRM conference. Those folks don't even know what an EAP is anymore.

http://www.inc.com/the-build-network/how-to-keep-your-young-talented-employees-from-leaving.html

EAPs: Getting Back to Basics with Supervisor Referrals

If you're a new HR professional, or even an recent recruit to the EAP profession, you may not know that EAPs had their origins in supervisor use of such programs as proactive management tools. Self-referrals evolved over time, only after EAPs became "broadbrush" beyond occupational alcoholism intervention forte. Unfortunately, the focus on self-referrals has overtaken the importance of supervisor referrals in the marketing of EAPs by managed care/behavioral health delivery models. And serious increases in risk have followed.

To reduce risk in your organization and dispose of this handicap, start understanding both the history of EAPs and their risk management, behavioral intervention purpose.

Typically, managed care will promote a 3-4% utilization rate. This is abysmal. It should be 9-16%.
It's all about how much training and relationship-building the EAP does with supervisors and key managers. Self-referrals are easy, but at-risk employees are hard to get through the doors of an EAP. But this where the payoff comes. It takes good supervisor training to reduce risk associated with these employees.

To get started on the right foot and conduct training that boosts your EAP utilization with more supervisors referrals, visit the Comprehensive EAP Supervisor Training Program and preview the entire product, FREE.

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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Welcome U.S. House of Representatives, the EAP is now a subscriber to Work Life Excel. Join the 12,000 additional staff readers from the U.S. Congress! Go to 

FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE NEWSLETTER or WORK LIFE EXCEL NEWSLETTER

Let's Try This Again: Where the Partners of "Real" Employee Assistance Programs Await

I would like to recommend as one EA professional to another that you read a very nice synopsis of risk management that you will find at Wikipedia.com. Like most, I am not one to recommend Wikipedia as true authority site, but if you want to know how an escalator works, you certainly will get an accurate understanding of it at Wikipedia. "Risk management" is something that EAPs almost never discuss, and there are those among us, having aligned themselves with managed care, would rather the topic not be broached. Why? It has implications for dumping health insurance aligned EAPs. Alas, I type... It appears, and is fairly obvious on closer inspection, that property casualty insurance markets represent untapped and healthier relationships for EAPs than the health insurance markets that keep co-opting the field in oblivion. These P-C markets and their constituencies are far removed from concerns of health insurance companies and their financial goals. Financial goals of health insurance companies have one concern...containing costs. Property casualty insurance and p-c customers something else, but it is not primarily containing costs. It is preventing losses, incidents, and events that "cost". Their goal is more precisely preventing losses that cost them and their customer money. This is a profound difference, and it has implications for EAPs, what they do, defining functional programs, maximizing utilization, expanding EAP reach and programmatic options, and devising ways to penetrate more potential risk areas within the human-behavioral continuum in order to prevent incidents. Typically losses of P-C insurers and their customers are are managed by risk management. Health insurance dollars are managed by denial of benefits and avoidance of payouts--sometimes sneakily. See the difference? Let's examine this further, and see if you get a little more excited. Risk mitigation measures have four tracks. Here they are: 1) Design processes or programs with adequate built-in risk control and containment measures from the start. 2) Periodically re-assess risks that aren't going away and see what can be done to reduce their impact or likelihood of occurrence, or create added intervention tactics. 3) Transfer financial risks to an external agency so if they happen, you survive financially. (e.g. Contract with re-insurers like Lloyds of London) 4) Avoid risks altogether (e.g. by closing down a particular high-risk business area altogether. (Hey, let's turn down all of the applicants who ever took statin drugs for high cholesterol.) Which of the risk management techniques above do EAPs fit into? (Excuse me, I mean to say real EAPs, fit into?) If you guessed #1 and #2, then you are correct. Health insurance works heavily with #4. It's called insurance denial or services denial. If you get the drift of this article, you can see two things: 1) Property casualty insurance companies don't know squat about real EAPs because we aren't exploring who and what they represent to the field. 2) As a result, they do not know who we are and how we can help them. and 3) health insurance is a lousy partner for EAPs because all they do is exploit a few elements of EAPs to prevent payouts. Here's a bonus observation: 3) Property casualty insurance and risk management need everything an EAP could possibly offer to intervene with human risk and exposures that could lead to losses. And then they need research to push the edge of that envelope....for example, an EAP starting a support group for the spouses of firefighters that could help prevent domestic conflict and subsequent losses of all sorts.) Health insurance companies need only one thing from EAPs -- assessment and deferral (AKA referral) to lower-costing services when exposures appear, otherwise no services proactive or preventative are really needed from the EAP. In fact, it could be argued that proactive and preventative services of EAPs in a managed care model should be avoided because it will lead to more referrals. Financially, this is in conflict. Hmmmmm.

Is Performance Evaluation Training and Consulting a New Gateway to EAP Consulting

Think about performance reviews and performance evaluations of employees. If your experience has been anything like mine, you know that supervisors not only dislike conducting performance evaluations for a host of reasons, but many supervisors renege on their responsibilities and don't do them at all. When I worked for Arlington County government, I discovered many supervisors hadn't done performance evaluations with employees in years. Where was HR? Ignoring these supervisors of course. The risk associated with lack of performance evaluation is enormous, and there is one overwhelming reason why. It's this: The supervisor has only his or her relationship as a tool to managed the employee performance, conduct, and other behavior. A bad relationship can turn into violence and other problems--like theft and conflicts--but the worst of all is violence in the workplace. Stay tuned. We are going to be display a new program and course on conducting effective performance evaluations. I believe there exists an enormous opportunity to propel the EAP field forward, and that is by claiming the high ground on this unmet need to train supervisors. Get ready for the Performance Evaluation Training Program. I will post a link so you can view it soon.

EAP Newsletters: Pipelines for Higher EAP Utilization

The workplace wellness newsletter is still under-appreciated for its value in reducing human and financial losses in the workplace. I think most companies separate wellness newsletter topics away from other education and training that reduces human behavioral risk in the workplace, and this a mistake. It's why I encourage using some newsletter device that combines all behavioral risk reduction content in one source document. I am beginning to think that reducing employee behavioral risk and exposures is better served by small pieces of ongoing, easily digested information, ongoing awareness information, and training in addition to whatever one-shot training topics are offered or mandated by the company. I agree with the wellness newsletter premise that it is a tool to support management first and employees second. This does not make it incompatible with helping or even entertaining employees. However, anything that a business organization institutes should be to its benefit or it is by definition or it is not in conformance with mission and goals of the organization and therefore is improper. The goal of a employee wellness newsletter should be in my opinion--a conduit for education, information, training, awareness to positively influence employees to practice better behaviors that reduce risk, enhances organizational productivity, and improves their personal well-being.

EAP Training: Many Pieces to Preventing Workplace Violence

Reducing risk of workplace violence is not just about conducting employee assistance program training on the signs and symptoms of an employee likely to shoot up the place. I have counted over a dozen different training topics and management-employee activities that EAPs should be considering and together collectively reduce workplace violence risk dramatically. I am not saying it is useless information to know what to do when an active shooter is loose in your building and heading your way. However, the chances of needing this sort of training is pretty close to extremely low. What's more important is EAP training and educating employees in the broad array of issues like prevention behaviors, awareness, and education topics that together lead to reduced risk of workplace violence. This is how to make your employee assistance program more valuable. Here is one such topic: Training and educating employees in how to get along with their supervisors and understand the subordinate relationship to a supervisor. How can this reduce workplace violence? Did you know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says 15% of homicide victims at work are supervisory/management staff. This makes leadership a hazardous job. Here a tip sheet that can help you help employees to avoid problematic relationship with the supervisorhttp:/handoutsplus.com

Manage Employee Defensiveness in Confrontations

Defensiveness seems to be one thing supervisors can always count on from employees when confronted about their performance issues. Let's make it easier for you. Because defensiveness can be a potential challenge in any corrective interview, supervisors must use “tools” to make interviews less difficult. These tools are associated with language and attitude. For example, one helpful tip is called the “help me understand” approach. Use “help me understand” statements to set a positive, non-threatening tone when confronting employees. Example: “Help me understand what to conclude when you commit to telling the truth about filing your activity reports and then we identify serious discrepancies.” Your attitude toward the employee is also an important tool. If you are convinced a confrontation will fail to produce a positive result, it will show from the moment you speak. An employee should never be able to tell from your attitude that you have lost faith in his or her ability to bounce back.

Getting to know your Employees

Goal: Getting to Know Your Employees:

Getting to know employees on a personal level allows for a more relaxed work relationship between employee and supervisor. It lets your employees know that you are there for them to help them succeed in their daily work life, and it also grows trust levels within your work environment.

Exercise:

In this exercise, you will stop by the offices of two or three employees at least once a week in an effort to get to know each one a little better. On the day you have selected for this exercise, allow employees time to get to their office and settle in that morning. Approximately one hour after employees’ arrivals, leave your office and, while in-route to selected employees’ offices, greet each person you meet with a simple “good morning” and a smile. Once you have reached the selected office, knock on the employee’s door and ask this first question with a natural smile: "Am I interrupting anything right now? If I am, I can stop back by later." If the employee is in the middle of a task, simply state: "Oh, it’s nothing that can’t wait until later. I was just stopping by to check in to see how everything is going. Hope you have a great day, and I’ll see you later." Then, proceed to next office. If employee is free to speak for a few moments, step into the office making sure to leave the door open. Ask these three questions leaving time for employee’s answers to each question before proceeding. 1. How is your week going so far? 2. Do you have any concerns about your current project/assignment/etc? 3. Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend? OR, Did you have a nice weekend? Spend approximately ten minutes in each of the selected offices. On your way back to your own office, offer a friendly greeting to all you pass spreading and increasing office morale. Once back in your office, take approximately 5 minutes to answer the three evaluation questions associated with this exercise.

Evaluation:

What effect do you think this exercise had on your employees? What impact would the weekly repetition of this exercise have on employees as a whole? Do you think that this exercise was beneficial to you as a supervisor? Why or why not?

EZ-View of EAP Stuff

I decided to make the home page WorkExcel.net (Resources for Employee Assistance Programs WorkExcel.net) easier to navigate. I will keep adding what's new to the bottom as things go along. Current projects include DOT Regulations Training for Supervisors captured from the Federal Regulations..It's one hour in length and written at the 9th grade education level so any supervisory staff can instructed in the programs use. Go to http://workexcel.net

Can You Say to An Employee: Don't Worry Nothing About EAP Attendance Goes in a Personnel File?

As EAPs get more "morphed" into insurance programs, I am discovering that many EA professionals can't answer the question definitively about whether the host organization has a strict policy of not mentioning in any personnel record ever whether an employee participated in an EAP program. The most common reasons employees hesitate to visit an EAPs are fear of the unknown, being asked personal questions, and confidentiality concerns. Even an outstanding EAP with solid communication strategies and excellent internal relationships will from time to time need to surmount the fear employees have about confidentiality. It should be standard practice to have no personnel records reflect participation in the EAP and organizations should hold themselves accountable in this regard, if not legally liable to underscore the importance. No EAP is worth a hoot without being able to assure employees of this provision and point to it in a company EAP policy in the employee handbook. Can you do that with your organization or every organization you serve if you are an EAP provider? This would be an easy question to answer 30 years ago. Now, it appears many EA professional aren't too sure. Since many EAPs are external providers or far removed from policy development (unlike yesteryear) they may not have the slightest ability to intervene with this issue. If you want to have the most at-risk employees never come to the EAP, make sure everyone knows that personnel records may or may not, depending on circumstances, possibly contain a record that an employee participated in the EAP.