Since 1989 Brisbane Counselling Centre has been frequently contracted to supply Employee Assistance Programs to both small businesses and large corporations seeking to maintain workplace well-being.
What are Employee Assistance Programs?
Employee assistance programs are generally facilitated by a workplace, and are described as programs to improve the overall psychological health and wellbeing of their employees.
Employee assistance programs, or EAPs for short; may encompass a number of measures. They are often tailored to help employees with issues that they are currently facing, alongside building plans and long-term initiatives that are designed to foster a healthy and happy workplace.
EAPs are not restricted to helping employees with the issues they may be facing in the workplace. They can also help individuals with their personal or family problems, in order to better equip them at work.
The Benefits of Employee Assistance Programs
Some of the more prominent effects that implementing EAPs has on your organisation is a decrease in stress for your employees, lowered turnover rates, a lowered risk of burnout and employee absences that relate to stress, higher levels of productivity and an overall happier workplace.
Making use of an EAP for your workplace is an ethically-sound decision, which places an emphasis on bettering the working conditions of your employees.
Employee Confidentiality
As with any kind of psychological support service, confidentiality is always upheld unless written permission has been provided by the client (or subpoenaed by a Court).
In order to resolve some issues, the facilitators of the EAP may be able to help employees talk with management or members of the leadership team.
Employee Assistance Programs with Brisbane Counselling Centre
Established in 1989, we provide access to highly skilled and experienced psychologists, are ready to take appointments now, don’t ask for contracts, don’t charge a ‘retainer’, respect privacy and confidentiality, do phone/Zoom consults, are committed to arranging suitable appointments within 24-48 hours of being contacted, operate six days a week and charge ‘fee for service’ only (to remove some of the financial burden on companies committed to caring for the psychological health of their workers).
What we don’t do however is provide presentations (including orientation days, conferences, workshops etc) or report clinically (eg diagnoses/prognoses etc) or even statistically (eg periodic breakdowns of ‘presentation’ type vs. number etc) without specific written post-request permission from the client. Additionally, we follow the 2020 National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines for Critical Incident Debriefing, which advises a 3-month waiting period and one-on-one psychotherapy (as against traditional group debriefing where effectiveness has come into question) for addressing a traumatic event.
If you’re after any of the aforementioned exclusions you should exercise due diligence when researching (there are many ‘big’ EAP providers that can be found floating around online) service quality:
- Access- timeliness, delivery (face-to-face, online/phone, on-site), location, administration.
- Clinical- practitioner qualifications and experience, continuity of care, treatments and interventions.
- Costs- rates, retainers, hidden.
- Anonymisation, confidentiality & privacy.
If it’s a friendly affiliation you seek and are still interested, please contact us to obtain information on the processes required to have things run smoothly from your end and ours.