Employee Assistance Programme

Communication Guide

Introduction

This document is a guide to maintaining effective communication of your Employee Assistance

Programme (EAP) service.

Your EAP communication plan should deliver these key objectives:

1. Inform the management team about the services provided by the EAP

2. Communicate the organisational benefits to the management team

3. Achieve a high level of initial and continuing awareness amongst employees

4. Inform employees of the breadth, benefits, quality and confidentiality of the EAP

5. Continuously maintain EAP awareness both of managers and of employees

Wellbeing Solutions Management (WSM) places a great emphasis on the importance of effective

communication to ensure the success of a high value EAP. Effective communication of your EAP

service is important for a variety of reasons:

• Employees need be fully aware of the service so that they can access it as and when the

need arises – reducing stress-related absence and improving employee well-being.

• Employers benefit from effective communication of a visible, tangible and valued

additional employee benefit provided to staff.

• EAPs offer a degree of legal redress against the risks of stress-related litigation – but only

if the service is effectively communicated and has been genuinely available to an

employee who later embarks upon stress-related legal action against an employer.

Organisational Benefits of EAPs

EAPs are first and foremost a powerful resource for employers. As organisations look to boost

morale, improve productivity and cut costs associated with sickness absence, EAPs are a positive,

relevant and cost-saving response used by thousands of employers across the UK.

The organisational benefits of your EAP include:

• An authoritative source of advice for HR & line managers

• Better management of stress-related sickness absence

• A tangible employee benefit that promotes staff well-being

• Mediation and a reduction in employment tribunals

• Discharging an employer’s duty of care

Communicating to Managers

An EAP is an effective HR and organisational tool that helps managers and employees through the

provision of counselling, advice and referral on a wide range of work and personal issues. An

important part of your communication process should be to reiterate the organisational benefits

of the EAP service to other managers, and to remind them how the EAP can help in their roles as

managers.

Management Referrals

The effective way to access the range of additional HR services offered, and to initiate specific

face-to-face counselling for an employee is through the use of a Management Referral e-Request

Form. Alternatively, and if you want to clarify what is available and talk through a situation, call

the EAP Case Management Team anytime on 020 7708 5000.

Management Referrals are an effective way of accessing:

• Face-to-face counselling for employees

• Critical incident counselling for individuals and groups

• Mediation and dispute resolution for individuals and groups

• Return-to-work assessments for stress-related sickness absence

Printed Leaflets & Posters

The core elements of your EAP launch and

employee communication plan are the printed

leaflets and posters provided by WSM. These

are of the highest quality and our leaflets come

with “bank- card quality” plastic membership

cards for each employee to place in their

wallet or purse.

You can choose from either our standard

generic EAP leaflets and posters (included in

the prices quoted to you) or you can opt to

have a personalised bespoke set of EAP leaflets

and posters designed and printed. The printed

A4 posters for display on your staff notice-

boards show your organisation’s unique access

code for logging into the employee website.

Distributing the EAP Leaflets

You need to decide how you will distribute the

leaflets to each employee. We encourage you

to give a new leaflet to every employee in your

organisation. We know from experience that

take-up is increased greatly when every staff

member is given a new leaflet.

It is important that this is done to maximise

the effectiveness and awareness of the EAP.

Ideally you will always give each employee an

EAP leaflet together with a covering letter to

introduce the service into the organisation.

Intranet Communication

Where employers operate an internal intranet site, we strongly recommend they add information

on the EAP in the relevant sections.

We suggest that you place the Employee Assistance Online access code on the intranet

We also suggest that you create a link to the Employee Assistance Online website.

We will send you a sample distribution covering letter / intranet copy that can be adapted as copy

for your EAP intranet page.

Maintaining Awareness

As well as ensuring the EAP effectively launched Wellbeing Solutions believes that it is vital we

work with you to maintain continual awareness of the EAP over the course of the year and

beyond.

We will re-supply you with a full set of EAP leaflets and posters on a two-yearly basis. We will also

deliver a rolling on-line EAP communication programme, consisting primarily of quarterly

e-posters for you to distribute internally. A sample seasonal e-poster from winter 2013/2014 is

shown below:

Employee Assistance Online WSM provides an online resource for employees that is made available to all EAP customers as

a complementary additional feature of the EAP service.

Our Employee Assistance Online website gives your

employees links to a variety of useful sources of

practical help and advice. Where available we also

provide the telephone numbers and opening times

of many specialist helplines run by leading experts

in their fields.

It has been thoroughly updated and is a powerful resource for both your employees and

managers. Please log on and have a click through this new website.

The website also gives employees another way of getting in touch with our team. They can

email us about any issue and give a preferred time for one of our counsellors or advisors to call

them back.

The Employee Assistance Online address is: employeeassistance.org.uk

Online Access Code

To enter the Employee Assistance Online website you and your employees will need to use the

specific access code that has been allocated to your organisation.

Your employees’ use of the website is completely confidential and anonymous – the access code

simply tells us how much the site is visited.

You will need to communicate your

bespoke access code to all your

employees. We suggest you include the

access code in any covering letter (or

equivalent) sent to all staff when you

distribute the employee leaflets - and

include it in the EAP section of your

intranet site.

If employees go onto the Employee

Assistance Online website without their

access code, they can request it directly

from us via the site. We’ll simply ask

who they work for and release the

access code.