One
of the things I have attempted to do over the past 25 years is help
EAPs see themselves as part of the organization's larger risk management
strategy. This is no way conflicts with the touchy-feel (aka, program
of attraction) model EAPs depend upon. On the contrary it enhances it.
Things
like employee newsletters and other utilization and promotion devices are risk management tools and part of the critical continuum of best practices organizations must embrace to reduce loss.
And
wow are these tools inexpensive. I would like to see more
organizations phoning the EAP and saying, "Hey, make sure your renew the
employee newsletter, it is probably saving us thousands or millions by
increasing your referrals."
There
are many other tools EAPs can assemble, but this is just one of them.
These things are not "nice to haves" as they are often portrayed by
uninformed (or misinformed.) Nay, they are essential risk management, and potentially,
"going postal" prevention tools.
Until recently, I really could
not determine why the value-added argument everyone well-understood in the early 1980's was not working better for EAPs, and why instead EAPs service vendors and internal programs were closing faster than a
creeping forest fire in Gatlinburg.
The idea the EAPs can grow and grow to
capture more unmitigated risks associated with human workplace behavior
should have overwhelming acceptance by now. I have theory: "The King has No Clothes" . Managed care wants nothing to do
with the property-casualty risk market, (which is what we are discussing
here), its issues, and the work and integration required to penetrate it.
It simple does not meet its business goals of reducing health insurance
costs and increasing profits. But EAPs did not start out this way. In yesteryear, they targeted the whole
ball of wax of risk in business organizations. If you are retired from the EAP field by now, but as you
read this, you know something dramatically degrading has happened to the
EAP field.
If a better linkage between EAPs and their powerful
risk management reduction capacity where ever truly codified, managed
care would risk losing control of EAPs and the simplistic model they
depend upon for their uni-polar purpose. Managed care depends on the
large majority of EAPs thinking and behaving as they do, and they spend
millions on publicity, educational forays, and press releases at every
turn to educate the human resources continuum and public at large to buy
into their understanding of EAPs as they wish them to be seen. That is,
more or less counseling and assessment services with a predominant
self-referral path. When the time comes, as it seems to do almost every
day, traditional EAPs bite the dust. Actually, a better way to put it
would be that they are more easily assimilated like the Borg in Star Trek.
("resistance is futile.")
I helped secure Arlington County Government's EAP and the School System's EAP against
managed
care contagion 15 years ago by capturing the high ground and allowing
the EAP core technology to work its magic by reaching out into any area
of the organization where human behavior and trouble employees became
exposures that threatened the financial well-being of the organization.
Arlington County/Public Schools now has a six person staff for 7,500
employees and a very healthy budget. No vendor or managed care
organization can touch it (many have tried) with the large swath of EAP
services it provides.
Below is
an amazing Web site which contains many arguments and appropriate
phraseology for EAPs to use in arguing for their larger purpose, value,
and ability to manage more behavioral risks within the confines of the
EAP core technology. If you face the ever-present jeopardy of closure
and takeover by managed care, you may find help here. Delve deep into
it, and start identifying unmitigated risks and exposures during the
year. Present an annual "risk mapping report" and recommend additional
growth for your EAP, not budget cuts.
The successful end result,
of course, is more lives saved and more organizational costs contained.
Be aggressive with risk management and program growth to help your EAP
and the EAP profession itself. It has shrunk 60% in 25 years despite
growth in what are called "EAPs."
The real story of successful EAPs is still be written, or re-discovered, but it is not one that will sit well with managed care. When it comes to the "lead, follow or get out of the way" approach to the EAP field (as I heard at a recent EAPA conference), be sure the one you are following has clothes.
https://erm.ncsu.edu/library/article/current-state-erm-2015
