EAP Utilization Hack #21: Do EAP Refresher Training with Supervisors

Many good employee assistance programs have closed down, consolidated, or been turned into 800 hotlines over the past several years. Will it happen to you?

Many of these solid EAPs lost the battle to stay open even while they were pointing to lives saved as a result of their services.

Over the years, I have identified a few contributing factors to this sort of tragedy. The leading factor that stands out is a lack of difficult employees referred by supervisors as the only way they could have possibly gotten help--under duress, with the leverage of job security motivating their choice to use the EAP, and then following through with recommendations given to them.

That's it in a nutshell.

You see, self-referrals are a good thing, but telling top management that they would never have used an 800# hotline--only your EAP--to get help is not going to be believed. If you use this line, then I can guarantee that you will soon be putting your office plants in a cardboard box.

Supervisor referrals of the most at-risk troubled employees, however, are completely different story.

The most difficult and problematic employees don't use an 800 hotline. Their level of denial and over-adaptive use of defense mechanisms preclude self-motivation and insight.

Instead, these employees reach the EAP because of constructive confrontation by managers, often where declining the formal supervisor EAP referral means termination for performance issue. This constructive coercion (which is really what it is) is the dynamic that saves lives. This is leverage.

You can increase the number of these valuable supervisor referrals, and it may help you not become a statistic. Click here to see two products to grow your EAP utilization with formal supervisor referrals.

Blog Note Update: EAPs and Emergency Room Relationships

I was talking the other day about improving EAP utilization and helping more employees with substance abuse problems by developing relationships with local emergency rooms--- and letting them know that you can do follow up work with patients who are eligible for EAP services at companies where you happen to provide EAP services internally or externally as an EAP vendor. Well, I got a press release today about something similar. I thought you'd like to see it. It dovetails into my earlier post on this subject but addresses intervening with people in the Emergency Departments by screening them for suicidal ideation and recent attempts, or indeed the primary reason for their current visit associated with a failed attempt. Recent research called sought to examine whether universal suicide risk screening is feasible and effective at improving suicide risk detection in the emergency department (ED). The findings were positive. The researchers do not have a recommendation along the lines of be sure to "Ask the patient whether we can have your EAP contact you confidentially and follow up," but I can say it here--get this going. Universal suicide risk screening in ERs is feasible and it leads to a nearly twofold increase in risk detection--and I am postulating that along with EAP involvement, even fewer deaths ultimately will be prevented.  If these findings remain true when scaled, the public health impact could be tremendous, because identification of risk is the first and necessary step for preventing suicide. Do you have our latest brochure with the free download link? http://eaptools.com/1.pdf -- check it out.

EAP Utilization Hack #22: Get an EAP Newsletter and Distribute It Monthly--NOT Quarterly

You may have heard me say this before but a quarterly EAP newsletter is a sheepish frequency. You won't see much impact from a quarterly newsletter, because typically they are four pages with lengthy content that don't get full read, and frequency is not going to deliver the top of mind visibility you need to stay in front of employees and have them remember you when personal problems arise. So, get a monthly publication of some sort. Here is a popular method with EAPs who get enormous impact:

EAP Utilization Hack #23: Create a Video to Orient Employees and Family Members

If you don't have an EAP orientation video on your Web site because it sounds too expensive or complicated, let me give you the story on doing this simply.

You can create such a video yourself--more useful and effective than a Hollywood movie--with professional narration that discusses the use of your program. You make it from a PowerPoint.
This is very easy to do and it can look stupendously professional.

You may have everything in-house to do this yourself already, but using an organization like www.Upwork.com, you can find 3-4 professionals, each with their own skills to piece together such a project for about $300-$500. Such a video will also help you compete in EAP proposals and in responding to RFPs because it will drive EAP utilization up, thereby reducing behavioral risk from at-risk employees.

Here are the steps:

1) Create your script. Make it about 15 slides. Plan 25-30 words (no more per slide.) Brainstorm with staff what will be in this PowerPoint. This entire move will last about 4-5 minutes.

2) Get a professional voice to create 15 mp3s from the scripts above. This will cost you about $25-$50.

3) Get a PowerPoint expert to create the slides with professional graphics. This will cost about $150-200. You can make awesome professional PowerPoints yourself by visiting www.slideshare.net and copying the techniques you see. Easy peasy. 

4) Get another PowerPoint person to sync the words with the images, and with the voice files that are inserted as sound objects using PowerPoint. This will cost about $50. If you understand PowerPoint, you can do this yourself.

5) Create a video from the PowerPoint Show using a software program like Wondershare or PresentationPro to turn the PowerPoint into a video. This software is about $200, but well worth it. You will use this in the future like crazy for other videos you can make.

Your done!!

Now you have something you can show in an auditorium with a laptop, put on the web, or put in a DVD. The real value of your video is reaching family members and otherwise unreachable employees who are not familiar with your EAP (yet). You can also email the video link anywhere.

The ability to work with family members is part of the historical purpose of EAPs. It is also part of the EAP standards. Managed care EAPs play this down, don't promote it, or avoid it altogether. Don't let this be you.

Use bitly.com to create a custom link to your video that is easily remembered. Try something like bit.ly/your-eap, etc. Put in the emails, in your EAP newsletter, on business cards, an on EAP posters.

The above could skyrocket your EAP utilization. To see an examples of EAP orientation or "what the EAP can do for you" PowerPoint and Video, visit the preview page at WorkExcel.com

#EAP #employee assistance programs