Employee Assistant Program

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An employee assistance program is an organization between a corporation, academic institution or government agency and its employees that provides a variety of support programs for the employees. Although EAPs are aimed mainly at work-related difficulties, they can also help employees with problems that originate outside the workplace that can impact work attendance or on-the-job performance. Employee assistance program or EAPs have grown to deal with a variety of issues such as marital problems, anger management, depression, anxiety and physical illness. EAPs can arrange for day care services for children of employees and elder care for parents of employees. Legal and financial assistance may also be available as well. All EAP consultations and referrals are confidential and the services are provided at no cost to the employee. An employer who has established EAP can often attract and keep better talent than a similar employer without an EAP. (Rouse, 2007) There are many benefits that is associated with EAPs.
How does an Employee Assistance Programs work? According to Elaws employees can directly access the EAP voluntarily or they can be referred by their supervisor only in cases of job-performance problems. When an employee uses EAP services voluntarily, there is no need for the supervisor to get involved. However, when a supervisor refers an employee to the EAP because of job performance, the offer of help may be combined with corrections, and the supervisor will need to continue to monitor the employee's performance until no corrections are needed. (Elaws, 2014)

How does an EAP help employees? The EAPs target both:
1. Employees whose performance shows a pattern is lack of productivity and
2. Employees who are aware of proble...

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...EAPs are a great idea. However, we have plenty of other great ideas that people refuse to use or just don’t seem to benefit from. There might be several different types of EAPs offered and even with the different types I still don’t see people willingly coming out about problems. It was only a small percentage of people who was willingly putting themselves into the programs.

Works Cited

Campbell, R. (2014, April 17). Ehow. Retrieved from What is Employee Assistance Program?: http://www.ehow.com/about_5443889_employee-assistance-program.html
Elaws. (2014). Retrieved from Office of the Assistant Secretary or policy: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/asp/drugfree/drugs/assistance/screen95.asp
Rouse, M. (2007, May). What is employee assistance program (EAP)? Retrieved from employee assistance program: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/employee-assistance-program

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