Employee assistance programs (EAPs) first appeared in the workplace in the 1940s to help employees resolve alcohol issues. Sixty years later, alcoholism and substance abuse is still a serious matter but it’s not the main reason people are calling EAPs. According to Sean Slater, national practice director for EAP and organizational wellness, with Ceridian Canada, relationship problems and mental health issues top the list of employee troubles.
“Family-related issues and general mental health issues—[these] reasons are neck-in- neck, year after year. They flip back and forth, but they are the number one and number two reasons why people call,” Slater says.
In fact, statistics from Shepell•fgi show that 24% of Canadians who use EAPs use them for relationship issues. Of that 24%, 45% are seeking help for general marital relationship problems, 29% for relationship breakdown, 21% for conflict resolution and 4% for intimacy issues.
Shepell•fgi also reported that approximately 20% of all calls to EAPs are initially assessed as mental health issues. Of those calls, 6.2% relate to depression, 2.9% are about anxiety, 1.7% are for anger issues and 9.2% are about work-related stress.
Slater adds that other topics, such as health and wellness and nutrition, are surfacing and gaining momentum. “There is a much bigger awareness that there is a link between physical and mental health. There’s also a bigger understanding among organizations that they have a responsibility in terms of providing support to employees around physical health,” he says. “There’s been a shift toward a preventative culture.”
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Slater says that as EAPs continue to increase their breath and depth of services, providers can expect utilization to increase, as it has at Ceridian. As resources and utilization increase, employers should see positive change in the health of their staff, company morale and productivity.
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