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Is It Finally Time To Reconsider Employee Assistance Programs?

Forbes Human Resources Council

Katie Lynch, Founder and CEO of Apiary Life, the leading provider of employer-sponsored life crisis support.

As the founder of an employee benefits solution, I spend a lot of time speaking with HR leaders about the support they provide for their valued employees dealing with personal life issues or crises. At least nine times out of ten, I hear that the primary support program they have in place for this is their employee assistance program (EAP). And 9 times out of 10, they share that the EAP is significantly underutilized and undervalued by employees. Worse, when employees call the hotline or seek support, the program provides an inappropriate or substandard solution or comes up blank. In more recent days, we have heard of situations where employees have sought referrals for therapists and other critical crisis support services, and the EAP has failed to provide assistance. 

Leading employers are now thinking enough is enough: Why should we continue to invest in a solution that provides mediocre service and has not been improved or modernized in decades?

Let’s say you are going to take a road trip with your family. If you knew that the chances were high that you would get in an accident or caught in a snowstorm while on the road with the most important people in your life in the car, would you drive a car that you thought was unsafe may break down? The same logic should apply to the employee benefits and support programs you offer. Would you intentionally put your most valued asset in harm’s way by providing something that is unlikely to help them and is, in effect, a check-box benefit? 

EAPs used to be where employees went for mental health and crisis support. Happily, the mental health market has since exploded with preventative, robust and on-demand support in response to the challenges faced by essentially every employee last year. Companies like Spring Health, Ginger, Lyra Health, Unmind, Modern Health and others are front and center, offering an array of different choices to employers, with some focusing on preventative care through expert content and educational courses and others providing direct access to care. A traditional EAP offers access to therapists through referral to partners who may not even be accepting new patients. In contrast, the remodeled take offered by new platforms can offer direct matching to in-house coaches and specialist therapists in a matter of days or even hours. Then there are the more preventative platforms that offer new and innovative solutions to mental health by providing digital tools developed by leading clinicians, authors and academics.

There has been a real shift in acceptance of mental health in recent years, paving the way for more employees to talk about it in the workplace. This has created a shift in how and when employees get support, driving a more preventative approach and mitigating the need for an EAP to be the only solution. While there is not a universal recognition by all employers, the movement, powered by the current pandemic, has been embraced by almost all leading employers I’ve seen, and those with benefits budgets are now able to offer their employees an array of specialized point solutions. As far as mental health solutions are concerned, the greatest challenge for the employer now seems to be choosing which one because the market is flooded.

But employers more often than not seem to be retaining their EAP in conjunction with these other solutions; why is that? Is it because the EAP also offers support to people during a plethora of life events, in some cases even including a concierge service that can help with anything from hiring child care to cutting lawns? I’d be interested to see the statistics on how many employees utilize the lawn service program, and I bet it’s a minute fraction of the estimated 1.8%-6.9% of employees who utilize the EAP at all. Many leading companies now provide child care solutions for their employees. They recognize the strain put on caregivers, especially during the pandemic, and the importance of providing top-level solutions to this critical issue. The same goes for substance abuse, fertility and family planning, addiction, and elder care.

This leaves life crisis situations, or more specifically, support for employees experiencing a divorce, child custody issues, loss of a relative, critical illness, or coping with a particularly traumatic or violent event. Other point solutions support employees through crises, including my own company and many others such as PinnacleCare and R3 Continuum. So what we now have in most leading companies is a huge crossover of services provided by specialist service providers, as well as the "jack of all trades" EAP.

With EAPs costing anywhere from $30-$50 per employee per year, this represents an enormous overspend for companies on their benefits. In addition to cost, providing both a "one size fits all" and point solution creates confusion for the employee and challenges utilization numbers and return on investment of both offerings. One selling point of some EAPs is their apparent global reach, and that seems to be a driver for many companies keeping these in place for now. But as new providers grow, I believe we'll see more companies adopt a more personalized, specialized approach to employee assistance in general. 

In considering all this, I wonder if we have we now reached a point where employers can take a step back and say, "Am I providing my employees with a robust selection of personalized benefits that collectively support them during each of the most critical parts of their life?" If the answer is yes, then should that still include an EAP? Employee well-being provision is no longer a check-the-box exercise, and we all know that providing comprehensive, valuable assistance drives out risk and cost, increases performance, and most importantly, retains valuable talent. So, why invest in all these fantastic bespoke services but still retain the old ones? If 2021 is about embracing the new, I believe it should also be the year to say out with the old.


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