How to Action Insights from your EAP

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are designed to support the health and wellbeing of employees, by providing them with the best tools and resources to feel better. These tools and resources should be both employee and employer focused.

• Employee focused resources include counselling or coaching, wellbeing tips and stress or wellbeing checks that give employees an indication of their wellbeing relative to others.
• Employer focused resources include de-identified and anonymous insight reports that share the utilization rate of programs, an outline of their effectiveness and insights into common workplace stressors.

Anonymous insight reports offer rich employee data on the specific wellbeing needs in a particular organization, as these may vary based on workplace culture, change, company size or industry. With such an important metric offered to companies, it is important they know the correct methods to address issues that have been highlighted specifically by their employees. An employee assistance program that is focused on long term wellness should be offering these insights to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programs and to reduce mental health risk over time.

INSIGHTS

In an insights report, there are a range of different indicators that may be useful for an employer to understand about their employees. The Uprise Health Employee Assistance Program produces quarterly reports that outline stress and wellbeing scores, changes in a range of wellbeing factors and specific causes of stress in the workplace.

Some of the wellbeing factors Uprise Health measures include mental health and turnover risk.

• Mental health risk identifies the proportion of employees at a low, moderate or high risk for developing a mental health issue based on their wellbeing scores. This allows employers to better understand the proportion of employees requiring urgent or preventative support to prevent deterioration of their wellbeing.
• Turnover risk is identified by employees stating how many days in the last week they strongly considered leaving the company. This allows employers to better understand the severity of employee disillusionment and the likelihood of unwanted turnover.

Common workplace stressors are measured by asking Uprise Health users, ‘which of the following have impacted your ability to work effectively’ and to select all that apply out of a range of stressors. In 2018 across organizations using Uprise Health, we found the most common workplace stressors to be that:

• Current project was not engaging/interesting (32%)
• Overloaded with work (31%)
• Frustrated with a colleague/colleagues (24%).

These factors would differ across organizations, but allow an insight into some specific actionable changes that are likely to improve engagement and morale within a workplace if properly addressed.

If your EAP provider only reports annual utilization and you want to try an EAP that offers actionable insights for long-term wellness initiatives, try a demo of Uprise Health.

CONFIDENTIALITY

Insights reports are entirely confidential and provide de-identified information on employee wellbeing. This confidentiality is a vital step to encouraging employees to seek support when they need it without the fear of stigma or consequences for reaching out. However, this confidentiality poses a unique threat for making insights actionable as the data collected may span different teams, departments or even regions. If an employer is concerned about better understanding specific groups to address, they may find some of our best-practice tips useful.

BEST PRACTICE TIPS

Upon receiving a broad insights report, there are a range of actions that will allow you to address any concerns in your organization to work pro-actively with your EAP provider to achieve lasting wellness goals.

1. Craft a message that addresses the concern with employeesFinding out the primary concerns specific to your workplace is a very unique advantage. It allows you as an employer to intercept any employee resentment and most importantly, prevent this issue becoming more extreme or leading to staff turnover. An employer may choose to send a company-wide acknowledgement of the issue and insights into the actions they are taking to improve it. This will resonate with those at-risk employees and make them feel heard and acknowledged.
2. Create your own anonymous survey to find out more about the issue and which department(s) it is affectingAs an employer, you may want to understand how to address the issue more specifically within your organization. To do this, some employers decide to create an anonymous survey that is sent out company-wide and identifies more specifically which department or area the issue is most prevalent. This may be useful for larger organizations where employees span a diverse range of roles and responsibilities.
3. Incorporate EAP insights results into management actions and track improvementThe most important step in making insights actionable is accounting for them in organizational strategy and goals. The importance of improving stressors should be communicated across seniority levels, as a priority that fits into ideally all of your organizational goals. The Business in the Community Mental Health Toolkit is a great resource with the best free tools to work systematically towards a mentally health workplace. This resource can be used to action the insights for your specific workplace stressors. In the section Going Further, the toolkit outline how to measure success, refine your approach and celebrate achievements.