Investing in an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is among those essential things you can never skimp on when looking forward to driving business growth. For those who might not know, an EAP is a free and confidential service offered by employers allowing employees to handle issues that may impact their job performance.
Offering an Employee Assistance Programme at your organization can help bolster morale, mitigate burnout, and enhance hiring and employee retention. But how do you go about this hassle-free? Below are simple hacks for creating and effective Employee Assistance Programme.
Start and EAP Committee
You will first have to create a committee comprising members of the human resources team and other. A good way to go about this is by mixing employees from different departments and at different levels of the organizations. Managers, junior staff, and the head of HR can all be involved.
Review the Different EAP Models
By now you should be aware of the fact that there are three different ways to administer an Employee Assistance Programme. Your EAP can be in house, outsourced, or simply blended. With in-house, your company hires a full-time EAP professional to offer employees with direct services or referral resources.
With outsourced, your company contracts an external Employee Assistance Programme provider to offer services to your employees through a portal, app, or toll-free number. Last but not least is the blended option, in which employees have the option to get help in-house or via an external vendor’s toll-free phone number.
Keep in mind there is no one-size-fits-all model for an Employee Assistance Programme . Although some employees may feel uncomfortable asking a colleague at work for help, others may appreciate the convenience and familiarity.
Create an EAP Policy
An Employee Assistance Programme policy can help illustrate to your team the essence of the program, offer guidelines for accessing resources, and set expectations for what the program hopes to achieve in the short- and long-term. Consider the policy to be similar to an employee handbook.
Moreover, you must take it upon yourself to outline how the business will preserve employee privacy and confidentiality. In this way, your employees are going to feel secure to make use of the Employee Assistance Programme services.
As you can see, creating an effective Employee Assistance Programme is no longer a hassle if you take it upon yourself to do a bit of research.