The Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA) has urged employers to remember that employee assistance programmes (EAPs) were “never intended to be the whole solution” amid growing concerns about rising mental health problems.
In a statement for World Mental Health Day today (10 October), Lou Campbell, employee counsellor, wellbeing coach and programmes director at Wellbeing Partners, claimed HR professionals have been forced to seek alternatives to “overstretched” employee assistance providers.
Campbell said many workers were being “palmed off” as a result, and HR teams were being called upon to support “distraught employees”.
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However, Eugene Farrell, chair of EAPA, said that it was no detriment to EAPs to “acknowledge that they have their limits”.
He added that EAPs were designed as “brief intervention counselling programmes” to support employees in the short term, and that they were still a valuable starting point when it came to mental health support, “without which many would perhaps not access the help they need”.
“Just because an EAP does not provide longer-term treatments, it does not mean that it is underperforming,” said Farrell.
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