Employee Support and Counselling 

Employee Support and Counselling products known as “EAP’s” Employee Assistance programmes are essentially a way of offering professional help and guidance to your employees.

EAPs first appeared in the US in the 1950s to help employees tackle alcohol-related problems. They made their way to the UK, in a more comprehensive format, in the 1980s.

They can be purchased as a stand-alone product or incorporated into a wider health and wellbeing product like a private medical insurance policy or a health cash plan.

The purpose of an EAP is to support your employees with any issues they may have. Most EAP products will offer telephone counselling with the option to provide a set number of face-to-face counselling sessions for in the moment support.

These are not an alternative to long term counselling and for more serious psychological issues employees may need to be referred to their GP for a specialist referral.

Professionally trained consultants are available to help with a number of issues that may be affecting your employees personal or work life. The EAP is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Some examples of issues that can be helped by accessing an EAP are:


Health and Lifestyle

  • Physical health​

  • Mental health​

  • Sickness absence​

  • Critical and traumatic incidents​

  • Eldercare​

  • Rehabilitation​

  • Addiction​

  • Cancer survivorship​

  • Terminal illness​

Legal Information

  • Probate and Wills​

  • Legal queries​

  • Caring for a dependant​

  • Debt and financial​

  • Buying a new home​

  • Separation and divorce

  • Work life

  • ‘Leavism’ and ‘Presenteeism’​

  • Managing change​

  • Return to work​

  • Bullying and harassment​

  • Redeployment​

  • Redundancy​

  • Retirement​

  • Stress​

Homelife

  • Identity and LGBT​

  • Domestic abuse​

  • Discrimination​

  • Childcare​

  • Bereavement and loss​

  • Relationships and marital

What Are The Tax Implications?

A stand-alone EAP can be regarded as a business expense rather than a benefit-in-kind as long as it satisfies HM Revenue and Customs’ definition of welfare counselling and is not provided directly to employees’ dependants, unless in relation to an issue being faced by an employee.

What Are The Benefits Of Employee Support and Counselling

Recent press coverage has highlighted limited access to counselling currently available via the NHS. Work-related stress anxiety or depression accounts for over half of all working days lost due to ill health in Great Britain.

In total, 15.4 million working days were lost in 2017/18 because of the condition, up from 12.5 million last year.

This equates to 57.3 per cent of the 26.8 million workdays lost to ill health according to figures released by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

A company funded employee assistance plan will provide employees the opportunity to self -refer to access support through the service provider. Some covers will also provide access to internally refer employees or sign- post staff to the service provider. This would be subject to agreement with the employee and for GDPR purposes a letter of authority will need to be signed and provided to the service provider.

Managers can help employees access the correct pathway and will help to support the back to work process helping to reduce the cost of absence.

A good, well implemented and communicated EAP can help your business:

  • Strengthen workplace mental health

  • Reduce the cost of absence

  • Improve Productivity

  • Attract talent

  • Reduce the cost of poor performance

Reporting and Management Information

Anonymised Management Information can be provided to the business. Reporting can include:

  • Service & usage summary​

  • Utilisation summary​

  • Helpline calls by category​

  • Work related calls​

  • Advice calls by category​

  • Benchmarking​

  • Demographics​

  • GAD-7 & PHQ-9​

  • Workplace outcomes suite​

How To Get Employee Support and Counselling

You can purchase an EAP product directly from a stand alone EAP provider. You can also purchase an EAP from some of the UK’s largest private medical insurance providers and most health cash plans will include these when requested. 

There are a number of ways to incorporate an EAP support within your business and if you would like to use a health insurance specialist, they will be able to advise you on the options available to you.

Ensuring that the EAP choices you make compliment the existing health and wellbeing strategy you may have in place and that staff are engaged and fully informed of the services provided for them.

If you would like to find out more about the service provided by Pegasus Benefits, then visit our contact form by using the button below.