Healthy employees are the foundation of a thriving workplace. However, recent studies show that America is “a nation recovering from collective trauma,” stemming from the pandemic, global conflict, racism, inflation, and climate-related disasters.
Studies also show that today’s employees are grappling with long-term stress and it’s taking a toll on their health and wellness and interfering with their lives at home and work. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) creates fact sheets highlighting mental health statistics in every state. Here are some highlights on Pennsylvania:
Understanding the Role of Employee Assistance Programs
An employee assistance program (EAP) is a workplace benefit that helps employees address everyday challenges that interfere with work or life. Multiple studies have shown that employee assistance programs are a win-win benefit. When employees have the support they need to manage life’s challenges, organizations are more likely to have an engaged and productive workforce.
If you are searching for a Pennsylvania EAP provider, consider the following tips:
Tip 1: Look for expanded EAP services
When employee assistance programs were first introduced, they focused on addressing alcohol abuse. Since then, many EAP providers have expanded their programs to address mental health concerns and other work-life challenges.
However, not all EAPs have evolved equally. At AllOne Health, we recognize that mental health, physical health, and behaviors are all intertwined. And they’re greatly influenced by relationships, surroundings, workplace culture, and other aspects of life.
To meet the needs of today’s employees and employers, AllOne Health and our Family of Companies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offer a whole health approach to benefits, with expanded programs that include the following:
Short-term Counseling Sessions
Mental health counseling sessions can help employees and their family members manage stress, anxiety, grief, and depression, resolve conflicts, improve relationships, overcome substance abuse, and address everyday challenges.
When providing counseling services, we often collaborate with the following organizations:
Life Coaching
A life coach has training in helping people achieve more by forming healthy habits, learning new skills, and tapping into self-motivation and accountability. With the assistance of a life coach, employees can reach new goals, manage life transitions, improve stress management, and become more effective and productive.
Financial Consultations
Financial consultations can assist with budget coaching, financial planning, bankruptcy, homebuying, debt management, identity theft, retirement planning, and saving for college.
Legal Referrals
A legal consultant can assist with various legal matters, such as estate planning, wills, real estate, bankruptcy, divorce, custody agreements, elder care, elder abuse, and adoption.
Work-Life Resources and Referrals
Work-life specialists can help employees obtain resources and referrals for child care, elder care, pet care, adoption, and other life issues. They can also help employees locate special needs support, including referrals for education, enrichment activities, housing, transportation, and community resources.
Medical Advocacy
A medical social worker has specialized training in helping people navigate the healthcare system, benefits packages, or health insurance plans. Employees can contact a medical advocate for help with insurance claims and coverage, and securing doctor referrals, medical equipment, transportation, and options for transitional care or discharge.
Tip 2: Look for Organizational Support
An AllOne Health EAP includes support from an account manager who works closely with human resources and leadership teams. Account managers have the necessary education, clinical expertise, and organizational knowledge to help human resources, managers, and supervisors address employee job performance and boost morale and productivity.
For example, account managers can advise supervisors on when to make “formal” and “informal” referrals to the employee assistance program. They can also help secure training programs to help employees with work-life balance, caregiving challenges, managing change, communicating effectively, overcoming compassion fatigue, avoiding burnout, navigating conflict, and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Account managers can also be a tremendous resource for onsite critical incident support, also known as a Critical Incident Response (CIR) or Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD). They can help organizations and leadership teams cope with various critical incidents impacting the workplace, such as natural disasters, an employee’s illness or death, workplace violence, layoffs, or other onsite traumatic incidents. Account managers can also help organizations obtain crisis management support.
Tip 3: Look for Easy Access and Human Connection, 24/7/365
With AllOne Health, people can call their EAP anytime, day or night, weekends and holidays, and reach a real human being. This free and confidential support is available to employees and their family members.
Callers work with an intake specialist, who will ask questions and refer the caller for short-term mental health sessions or other solution-focused counseling, such as a legal or financial consultant or a work-life specialist. In some cases, callers may receive in-the-moment counseling support.
AllOne Health also provides access to an online member portal, which gives employees easy access to online resources. For example, employees can fill out and submit an online form to request counseling services or work-life support. They can also use the member portal to access the live chat feature, available weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.
Employees can also use the member portal to access thousands of articles, podcasts, and resources, including an online financial wellness center, health and lifestyle assessments, soft skills courses, tools for human resources professionals, marketplace discounts, and provider resource locators.
Many people have also developed preferences for how they receive counseling services. It’s helpful when an EAP offers in-person sessions, video sessions, phone sessions, live chat sessions, and asynchronous messaging (which allows an individual to pause and continue the conversation at their convenience).
Tip 4: Look for Ongoing Promotional Materials
When selecting an EAP, look for a provider that offers a variety of promotional tools and resources to build employee awareness and engagement. For example, AllOne Health provides Insights, a monthly newsletter that discusses different topics related to whole health. It also provides two webinarseach month produced by in-house clinicians.
Tip 5: Consider Customer Satisfaction Rates
Every year, AllOne Health asks its customers for feedback on its employee assistance services and presents these results in an Annual Report Card Summary. In our latest survey, 97% of our customers would recommend AllOne Health’s employee assistance program to others. Here are the other questions we asked our customers and how they rated us:
Next steps?
Finding the right employee assistance program for your organization can be challenging. When selecting or renewing an employee assistance program, it pays to look closely at what is offered. Review contracts carefully, watch for added fees for services, and check employee utilization rates.
For more information, please review these additional resources:
- 10 Questions to Ask Your EAP Provider | AllOne Health®
- EAP Program Guide: Everything You Need To Know | AllOne Health®
- 5 Ways to Increase EAP Utilization: How to Make Sure Your Employees Know About and Use Your Program | AllOne Health®
- 5 Benefits and Challenges of Employee Assistance Programs | AllOne Health®
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