Employee assistance programmes
In organisations everywhere, employees are facing increasing pressures to be both effective at work and to maintain a quality home life. Modern business demands high performance, short response times, long working hours and heavy workloads. At home, people face money pressures, family demands, education concerns, high lifestyle expectations and limited time with loved ones.
When an employee has an issue, whether the origin is work- or home-based, performance in the workplace is likely to be affected. Sickness and absence can increase, while concentration and efficiency may decrease.
How much is stress costing your business?
Protection against litigation
How can an employee assistance programme help?
Feel better with BUPA Employee Assistance
A choice of three programmes to meet your needs: BUPA Premier EAP, Classic EAP and Key EAP
The services explained
Management information
Focus on quality
How to gain maximum benefit from your employee assistance programme
Why not combine your EAP with a health audit and employee wellbeing programme
How much is stress costing your business?
Stress-related sickness is widely reported to be a major cause of absence for UK businesses. It is estimated that 13.4 million working days a year are lost through stress, anxiety and depression, with sickness absence costing over £12 billion, according to the CBI.
Workplace stress is becoming a major health and safety concern for employees and employers alike. It makes sense, therefore, to take the best care of your employees, not just to comply with legislation, but to inspire greater commitment, efficiency and productivity.
Protection from litigation
The number of workplace stress litigation claims is on the increase and the need to protect your business has never been greater.
The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to secure the health (including mental health), safety and welfare of employees whilst at work. Equally, the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities and to take measures to control the identified risk. The HSE is planning to include stress as part of their workplace assessments. The courts have acknowledged that an organisation with an employee assistance programme (EAP) has gone a long way in fulfilling its duty of care responsibilities.
How can an employee assistance programme help?
- Demonstrates a duty of care to your employees
- Minimises the risk of litigation for your organisation
- Reduces employee and organisational stress
- Provides a confidential and free service for employees who feel unable to turn elsewhere
- Improves productivity and efficiency – a distracted employee does not work efficiently
- Combats or manages harassment and bullying
- Assists employees in achieving a harmonious work-life balance
- Reduces staff turnover and absence rates
- Supports a population facing psychological challenges
- Supports an individual or team through a difficult period
Feel better with BUPA Employee Assistance
- Looks after over 500 organisations in the UK, with a range of cultures and from a variety of industries
- Offers unrivalled clinical excellence and over 20 years’ EAP experience, formerly as the Personal Effectiveness Centre (PEC)
- Offers unrivalled clinical excellence and has ISO9001:2000 accreditation
- Has the largest network of high quality counsellors in the UK, all with at least three years’ postqualification experience of face-to-face counselling
- Provides the management information you need to identify trends within your workforce
- Ensures that all calls are answered by qualified and experienced counsellors who speak and understand a wide range of languages
A choice of three programmes to meet your needs
BUPA Employee Assistance is a completely confidential service that helps individuals to overcome any issues that may impact on their work. It gives your workforce and their families* access to a confidential counselling and advice service, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, whether it is a workplace issue, a relationship breakdown, or a financial issue that is causing distress, we offer support when it is most needed.
* Families relates to husband, wife, partner and children under the age of 21 living at home.
Employee Assistance Survey, 2005
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BUPA Premier EAP
Our Premier service is a proactive risk management tool designed to maximise usage and visibility of the service. We provide detailed management information on usage of the service, interpreted by an EAP consultant or occupational psychologist. This allows you to identify any ‘hot-spots’ within your organisation and we provide benchmarked data to see how you fare against other players in your industry.
For the employee, the Premier EAP includes the telephone helpline plus:
- five to eight sessions of face-to-face counselling in addition to legal and financial advice
- family and matrimonial advice
- work and career guidance
- manager helpline
- access to BUPA search and selection child and dependant care
- BUPA HealthLine
BUPA Classic EAP
The Classic service consists of telephone counselling and access to legal and financial advice, with five to eight sessions of face-to-face counselling available to employees if required.
BUPA Key EAP
This service combines telephone counselling with access to a range of advice services, including legal and financial assistance. Face-to-face counselling can be offered on a ‘fee for service’ basis, for which you act as the gatekeeper.
The services explained
Telephone counselling
All our calls are answered by trained and qualified telephone counsellors, 24 hours a day. Our counsellors can offer support for issues such as concerns about personal relationships, stress, anxiety or depression, emotional issues, substance abuse, behavioural difficulties, bullying or harassment, bereavement and sexual identity.
Face-to-face counselling
If clinically appropriate, between five and eight sessions of face-to-face counselling can be provided depending on the model you choose. BUPA Employee Assistance benefits from having one of the largest networks of affiliate counsellors which enables the best possible match between the issues facing the individual and the specialties of our face-to-face counsellors, without the need to travel long distances.
Legal guidance
Our legal advisers and practising solicitors offer 24-hour telephone assistance on all legal matters including matrimonial issues, consumer law, probate, road traffic incidents, contracts, neighbour disputes and any other legal queries which could arise. Our
Financial advice
Our qualified and registered financial management specialists are available for support on issues of debt, budgets, pensions, mortgages and independent financial advice. In the event of debt or money management issues, we can send each caller a specially designed pack to help them identify their specific income and expenditure in preparation for a telephone consultation with one of our specialists. We will work through a debt counselling model to determine the behaviours and triggers which have led to the debt and to help change spending habits.
Consumer advice
Help and advice on guarantees, returns, scams and complaints and your rights when buying goods and services.
Family and matrimonial advice
Specialists are available to discuss all aspects of matrimonial and family problems including partners, children, divorce, separation and conflict.
Work and career guidance
We provide confidential discussions on issues such as work stress, careers, role difficulties, appraisals, disputes and teamwork.
Child and dependant care search and selection
Designed to ease the strain for all employees who have children or care for dependants, our fully qualified co-ordinators can offer help and advice on a range of issues including planning a family, care options, care costs, parental support and carer support. We can also undertake detailed proactive searches to find suitable care within your locality.
BUPA HealthLine
24-hour access to health information and guidance on almost any health-related issue – from asking about symptoms and travel vaccinations to offering support on lifestyle changes. A team of experienced, specially trained nurses, supported by research-based up-to-the-minute health information, is ready to answer your queries - they can even talk you through first aid treatments around the home.
Management guidance
Managers can use the EAP as an extra resource to assist them in dealing with various people management issues. They can discuss how best to handle difficult employees or situations such as bullying, harassment or personal hygiene in their team. Our experienced HR specialists, counsellors or occupational psychologists will provide guidance.
Management information
Mind week report, May 2004
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A true EAP is a proactive, behavioural risk management tool for your organisation, providing practical and emotional support. It should not be there simply to pick up the pieces.
We provide you with anonymised management information that outlines service usage. This shows a gender split and breaks the calls down by the key issues presented including workplace stress, management guidance and personal issues. Our knowledge and experience can guide you to the best practice solution, which can help reduce or eliminate issues before they arise. With the BUPA Premier EAP we can also benchmark your statistics against other organisations within your industry.
How does the service work?
- Employee/family member calls
- Counsellor identifies nature of assistance required
- Legal/financial/health calls are transferred to appropriate specialists
- Counsellor carries out an in-depth assessment for calls with an emotional component
- The impact of the situation on the individual and the need for counselling is established
- A referral to telephone counselling, short-term therapy or, if appropriate, face-to-face counselling, is made within 24 hours
- All counselling cases are monitored to ensure quality and satisfaction
Focus on quality
We recognise that the quality of our services is dependent on the quality of our practitioners and the relationships we build with them. We therefore have rigorous quality control and feedback procedures.
Our commitment to high standards of service means we seek feedback from service users. This information is used to improve our service continuously. All of our staff are committed to continual development and we are recognised as an Investor in People. Our recent customer satisfaction survey revealed the following results:
- 99 percent of callers say they would recommend the service to a colleague
- percent of employees say that BUPA Employee Assistance improved their ability to work effectively
- 55 percent say our service saved them from taking time off work
How to gain maximum benefit from your employee assistance programme
The key to the success of your programme is its implementation and communication to your managers and employees. The service includes support materials designed to maximise visibility and utilisation while ensuring the service is confidential, immediate and more effective through early intervention.
You will be given a dedicated account manager. Our approach is to work with you to plan promotional activities that best suit your organisation. Marketing materials include leaflets and wallet cards, emails, letter templates, intranet pages, posters, manager guides and articles for your in-house newsletters. Depending on the number of employees in your organisation, on-site presentations are included for the Premier and Classic EAPs. For a supplementary fee we can provide training courses, additional on-site presentations and workshops. Manager briefings help managers to recognise stress in others at a time when referral to the EAP would be most effective.
Following the launch of your service, the initial takeup will be monitored and the communications plan reviewed accordingly.
Why not combine your EAP with a health audit and employee wellbeing programme?
BUPA Positive Health is an online health-auditing tool, which also acts as a cost-effective health and wellbeing programme. Employees are invited to carry out the online health and wellbeing assessment, which also includes specific stress, exercise, nutrition, sleep and back/joint assessments. Employees receive an immediate report and action plan and access to a library of health information and health news. Health logs allow employees to track their cardiac risk factors such as weight and cholesterol, and by taking regular assessments individuals can monitor how their health and wellbeing changes in line with their lifestyle.
By providing aggregated employee statistics (anonymised to comply with the Data Protection Act), BUPA Positive Health can provide your organisation with valuable management information so you can:
- pinpoint health and wellbeing issues in your organisation as a whole, or by sub-groups such as department, location or role, so that action can be taken quickly to resolve them
- benchmark the health and wellbeing of your organisation and sub-groups against other similar employers
- monitor changes in health and wellbeing, and its effect on business performance
BUPA Positive Health and BUPA Employee Assistance can be offered separately or combined into an all round health and wellbeing service for your staff. There are many different combinations available and we would be pleased to discuss your needs in order to propose a programme that is right for you - and your budget.
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