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.

Should EAPs Give a Hootily about Customer Service?

If you have been reading this EAP blog for a number of years, then you know I like to discuss how to apply EAP skills, knowledge, advantage, the attractive element of legal confidentiality, leverage, relationship building, risk identification opportunity, and organizational access to reach into organizations and spot new and emerging problems and opportunities that will save more lives and deliver more black ink to the bottom line. This is how you get management tostand up and notice how the EAP core technology works. (Especially since their CFO and managed care have sold them a bill of goods that are not true EAP.) Indeed, an 800# service as a substitute for a comprehensive workplace focused program is really a farce when you consider all that EAPs do and can do. For example, take customer service training. Of course EAPs were never designed to train employees in how to deliver customer service. But let me ask you this: Is it appropriate for EAPs to deliver seminars on stress management? What about relationship effectiveness in general? Would you say that helping employees to improve engagement, attitudes, optimism, and manage conflict better are worthwhile and appropriate for the EAP role? Of course you would. So, what do you think customer service is all about? I think you are getting my point. EAPs can REACH into risk. And these sorts of services, training in this case smartly delivered, can elevate your program and give it a permanent spot at the strategic table in the employer's boardroom. After all you have a perspective that no one else can give.

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