By Dr Renate Volpe

Many “new, young” companies in South Africa start up with young employees whose needs alter as they get older, get married and have children.

Imagine the scene: over a mere five years, people who were single can become married, have children, and consequently have a change in priorities. What are the implications when nothing changes at work to adapt to the changing needs of the work force? The implications for motivation, management style, and stress levels, health medical aid utilisation are devastating.

Without any extra effort, a well run, regular EAP should be able to provide the statistics with this type of information at the drop of a hat.

Providers
To meet the changing needs of your employees, it is useful to have a comprehensive netowrk of providers on which you can call as and when needed. In my 20 or so years in the industry and having being one of the founders of the largest mental health infrastructures in this country, I have learnt one invaluable principle.

Do not begin by looking at service providers.

Do your homework first by asking the following questions:

• What is your company strategy?


• What is your commitment to your people in this strategy?


• Which are parts of the strategy are “just words” and which parts are you actually prepared to carry out?


• How far are you prepared to go?


• Analyse the relativity of what you are prepared to invest in people support and development - relative to other company initiatives.


• What is each division doing concerning:

- training;
- human resources;
- medical;
- AIDS initiatives; and
- OD?

• Where would EAP fit?


• How can EAP work collaboratively with what already exists?


• How are you going to make sure the information is consistently available to top management?

Once you have answered these questions you may look at providers. Each has different strengths and weaknesses. Here are a few providers you may wish to call on:

Welfare Organisations and NGOs
In an attempt to bolster failing finances these organisations have entered the world of EAP and sell their skills to companies. Their strength is in the therapeutic capacity their weakness in business speak and acumen.

Providers who have aligned themselves with medical aid initiatives
These are the most recent providers to appear. Strategically they have placed themselves well. I would simply advise that you assess the breadth and depth of their experience and understanding of EAPs.

Monopoly providers driven by call centers
Their marketing is professional, they are technologically orientated, and mostly their coverage is predominantly therapeutic. Make sure that you are getting what is sold to you. Are the call centre staff professionals? How many people ever make it past the call centre to professionals? How often are they seen? Analyse very carefully what you are getting for your money. A much smaller percentage of people utilise the after hours service than you would imagine. More than 80% of business is taken care of during normal working hours.

Individual providers
If you use an individual provider you have a therapist or counselor. You do not have an EAP. An EAP is a comprehensive service involving different categories of professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, strategists, human resource professionals, trainer’s facilitators, and many more.

A comprehensive EAP also needs to straddle the areas of counseling, work performance management, training and development and strategic turf to qualify as a comprehensive EAP.

Individual consultants
What is their background? What are their unique strengths? What does their network consist of? How broadly based is their service or is it highly specialised?

Internet access
Educative articles should be freely available on the company intranet. Questionnaires to indicate whether a person should be concerned about their stress level or relationships are easily accessible. Research remains inconclusive as to whether people will more easily approach an anonymous entity for assistance on the intranet than make a personal appeal.

As you will realise, in short there is no ideal provider. Nothing stops you from having a mix of providers to meetl the various speciality needs. Make it part of your contract with providers that they collaborate with other providers and share information which will benefit the company overall. Encourage an ethos of collaborativeness versus competitiveness.

HIV / AIDS
A last word on Aids/ HIV and EAPs: stop and think!

Issues employees may grapple with include:

• I suspect I might be HIV positive, but I’m too afraid to go for a test and find out;


• I am HIV positive and I don’t know how to tell my spouse; and


• I am afraid. I am in a crisis. What about my children, my finances, my relationship, my job?

These are all human issues: stress! crises! relationships! finance, which fall under the umbrella of EAP.

An educated EAP intervener with an understanding of Aids and HIV is well qualified to assist such a person. Eighty percent of AIDS related issues involve human agendas in a critical context. Obviously, referral to appropriate providers would form part of the service continuum.

In the longer term, one would have to be wary of the impact of an EAP absorbing the total spectrum of AIDS related human dilemmas and this may inadvertently impact the traditional broader spectrum EAP negatively.

In essence whether you are the CEO or the person who makes the tea, you make a contribution to the success of your company and at the very least you deserve to understand yourself and develop yourself, be competent in relating to people and have them relate respectfully to you.