What is EAP?

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a worksite-based program designed to assist employees and their families in ameliorating a variety of difficulties before they begin to affect work performance. Personal problems include, but are not limited to health, marital, alcohol, substance abuse, legal, career, emotional, stress or financial concerns. Eventually, if left untreated these problems may adversely impact an employee's productivity or ability to function on the job. These difficulties may also lead to increased absenteeism, theft, worker's compensation claims, medical leaves and an increase in the usage of medical and/or mental health benefits.

The core technology of an EAP as outlined and adopted by the Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA) includes:

Expert consultation and training to appropriate persons in the identification and resolution of job performance issues related to the aforementioned employee personal concerns.
Confidential, appropriate and timely problem-assessment services.
Referrals for appropriate diagnosis, treatment and assistance in the formation of linkages between workplace and community resources that provide such services.
Follow-up services for employees who use those services.

The EAP will design programs to prevent small problems from becoming bigger ones. This is done with a focus on wellness. Personal problems affect company efficiency from a line worker to the highest level of management. The C.E.A.P. (Certified Employee Assistance Professional) has readily available state-of-the-art educational materials to ascertain viability thus continuously educating the employer of data available.

Why are Employee Assistance Programs needed?

Each of us, regardless of our position in the organization, face a variety of problems in our daily lives. Usually, we can work them out ourselves. However, sometimes our problems become too much for us to handle and they affect our personal happiness, our family relations, our work performance, and even our health. The overall impact on companies is costly.
For example:

30% of all absenteeism and 66% of all terminations are related to employee personal problems (National Institute of Mental Health).
25% of workers are substance abusers (National Institute of Drug Abuse). Research shows that the economic impact of alcoholism was a loss of $117 billion in 1987 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) --- this amount is expected to have doubled by the year 2000.

[ Home ] [ Who We Are ] [ Seminar Series ] [ Violence Prevention ] [ Executive Coaching ] [ Why EAP's ] [ What is EAP? ] [ Private Counseling ] [ Employees ] [ Supervisor Section ] [ Privacy Statement ] [ www.healthy-exchange.com/ale/spring ] [ Contact Us ]
© 2001 Associates for Life Enhancement, Inc.

Website Hosted by DMW