EAPs give personal solutions to stressed workers

by Clarissa A. French

SBJ Staff

Employee assistance programs may be the wave of the future in workplace benefits.

EAPs can help employees deal with personal problems ranging from financial and legal issues, to workplace conflicts, to family or personal issues.

"We (instituted an EAP) for a multitude of situations employees were coming to us about," said Gail Henrichs, RN, BSN, occupational health nurse for Paul Mueller Company.

"It was important to us that employees could keep personal problems separate from work," she said.

Using an EAP, she said, is "very time effective," since employees and supervisors can concentrate on work instead of dealing with personal issues on company time.

Mueller contracted with Recovery EAP & Counseling LLC to provide its program.

Gary Turner, of Recovery EAP, said employee assistance programs can offer anything from basic assessment and referral, to a set number of free counseling sessions, paid for by the employer. Typical counseling packages offer three to six sessions.

Research has shown "on the six-session model, 85 percent of people that access the EAP for emotional issues can deal with the problem within those six sessions," he said.

Employees at firms contracting with Recovery EAP receive brochures and wallet-size cards with a hot line number. Services are "totally confidential. Absolutely nobody within the company knows a person has picked up and accessed the hot line," Turner said.

Turner said roughly 9 percent to 10 percent of the employees of companies contracting with Recovery EAP use the program.

Meanwhile, utilization of EAP services for personal issues related to elder care is on the rise, Turner said. "A new direction we're going to try to incorporate is a nurse who specializes in elderly care," he added.

Recovery EAP's parent organization, New Directions Behavioral Health of Kansas City, already offers this service in the Kansas City market. It is expected to be available locally in early 2000, Turner said.

With the aging of the baby boom generation, Turner said, the elder care problem will explode, noting that an estimated 65 million people will be over age 60 as of 2025.

Regarding the existing problem, Turner cited a 1997 study sponsored by the National Alliance for Caregivers, AARP and Glaxo-Wellcome that reported almost 25 percent of American families, 22.4 million of them, were caring for an elderly family member, almost three times more than a decade previously.

Almost two-thirds of caregivers are employed full or part time, and more than 40 percent, mostly women, also have children under the age of 18.

The study also reported that of those providing elder care, 10 percent leave the work force altogether, 11 percent have to take extended leave, 59 percent go to work late or take long lunches because of care-related issues, and all caregivers surveyed reported spending at least one hour on the phone during the work day, dealing with care issues.