By Dr Renate Volpe

Expanding the one dimensional view of a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme.

We have the most amazingly simple and powerful technology at hand. In an era when managing people should be the cornerstone of every company’s strategy, this technology remains misunderstood, misinterpreted, minimised, sidelined and totally underutilised.

The “people” agenda is everyone’s priority. Is it therefore not time that we understood three simple principles? The first is that the real answers to everything complex in life are, in essence, simple.The second is that we should stop looking to the stars for profound answers when the answers are staring us in the face. The third is that we run from what we fear and what we do not understand or know how to deal with. In this case it is how our humanity and emotional and psychological states are affected by ever increasing pressures in an ever faster moving and changing world - a world that says one thing (“We respect people.”), and yet relentlessly and unapologetically denies people their most basic needs for:

- human relationships;
- honesty;
- respect;
- dignity;
- time;
- communication;
- relationships;
- making a contribution; and
- participation.

This is all done in the pursuit of remaining ahead of the pack.

Human fragility, managing moods, managing conflict, standing up for what we believe in, developing people, living with the consequences of our decisions, our relationships, our pain and pleasures, our emotions are all issues each and every one of us deals with daily no matter what our status in the company, our grading, gender, age, experience, qualifications or the apparent effectiveness of our corporate masks.

An HR manager at one of SA’s biggest corporates recently referred a highly placed employee to me who had “finally cracked” and needed counseling, as “she could not do this corporate thing anymore!” After listening to the person who was referred to me for counseling, the person who referred them said to me, “I wanted to say to her, ‘I feel like that, all of the time, I am just managing to hide it better.’”

A second HR person involved in the same referral said to me, “This organisation has substantially contributed to this person’s stress.” Now that the cracks are showing, however, they are pretending they had nothing to do with it and are labeling her as weak!

People are the company. People issues are integral to the company. The management of a company is essentially responsible for its people’s emotional and psychological health.

The other day I sat in a meeting with a national company where we were giving management feedback and indicators about the desperation their people were experiencing in a foreign country. One of the people at the meeting said dismissively, “I have introduced many EAPS in my time.”

What this person was saying was: EAP is not rocket science! It is simply referring a damaged person who needs counseling to one of those many weird professionals, yet referring an obviously stressed individual to a professional is probably only one percent of an EAP.

Using an EAP

In essence, EAPS are people management technology which can be used to the benefit of individuals and companies at many levels: Their influence may be felt in a variety of ways. EAPs are used for the obvious things such as:

- referring people for counseling for personal or work related problems;
- managing stress;
- managing performance-related problems;
- AIDS related dilemmas;
- mood related disorders;
- addiction related challenges; and
- relationship difficulties at work and at home.

They can also be used for the not-so-obvious things such as:
- management technology for understanding and managing the behavior of people;
- mediating in difficult situations between colleagues or management and staff;
- behaviour risk management;
- managing performance;
- managing crises;
- enhancing development;
- performance appraisal processes;
- consultation regarding fit;
- human relationship skills; and
- fraud and rebuilding trusting relationships.

IN addition, EAPs have an education component which helps with:
- stress management;
- developing a resilient personality;
- skilling managers to identify, interpret and manage human behaviour;
- intervening in a crises timeously and appropriately;
- training in trauma management (assess when and what type of referral is appropriate);
- emotional intelligence; and
- management and leadership development.

EAP is strategic technology. It is an essential business driver and it may be used in the development and retention of staff.

Imagine that three to 25% of your company’s employees have regular, confidential conversations with professionals about what is going on in their lives (often to do with work or at the very least influenced by work or by their manager or by their company.) Just think about the information being collated here, about the company culture, the management style, then answer these questions:
- What is happening in various divisions?
- How much or how little do employees buy into your company strategy?
- What is the actual value status of actual displayed behaviour in your company?
- How do people feel about top management?
- What works, what doesn’t?
- What changes do they buy into?
- Which ideas do they have to contribute yet don’t feel heard, or don’t know how to make themselves heard?

At the end of the day, you have a consistent climate survey on the go for which you are paying very little in relative terms. (How often are major consultancy firms called in at immense fees to deliver more or less the same information in the much less honest context of questionnaires and interviews. (This does not imply that there is not a place and a time for such surveys.)

In the face of the intense dilemma we face daily in the management of human capital, surely any information about the state of our people in our companies that will assist management in driving the company towards making profits, (which is the reason for business,) is helpful?

Strategic information

What do you have when you have an established EAP? Without breaking confidentiality at any level you have strategic information, which is critical for the future survival of your company, consistently on tap. You have insight into who is taking strain, the reasons for the strain, whether it is the women or the men, and which age group is presenting more often.

You can determine if race tells a story, looking at what the actual culture is rather than the espoused culture. You are also able to determine how wide the gap is and how can it be narrowed, and whether the people presenting with problems were recently employed or are longer term employees.

EAPS are so often relegated to the corridors of companies for those people who have become “fragile”. We keep on looking to the stars for the answers when it comes to managing people.

Do you have an EAP? If not get one. If you have one, use it comprehensively.