Employee Assistance Programs in a Changing World

Abstract

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are a vital aspect of organisational support and a significant and important element of human resource management and organisational behaviour. The efficacy of an EAP will therefore have strong implications for the effective functioning of the people processes within an organisation. It is incumbent upon organisations to assess the success of their program, its effectiveness and its efficiency. An Australian employer survey was conducted with 44 organisations that currently provide EAPs to their employees. The study was concluded and published in 2015 and was based on a range of organisations with a total of approximately 50,500 employees who are in receipt of EAP services, from providers who are members of the Employee Assistance Professional Association of Australasia (EAPAA) (see Compton & McManus 2015). The results concluded that EAPs do indeed attend to a wide range of psychological issues and that organisations benefit widely from the existence of EAPs. Furthermore, the study revealed that a close connection between EAPs and Human Resources Management (HRM) is shown to be beneficial in terms of the broader organisational issues. This chapter elaborates on the findings of this study, and shows how the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the role of counselling back into the spotlight as employees struggle with numerous conflicts within the workplace and personal lives.