Many EAPS fall into a common - and dangerous - category: Management thinks the program is great, but employees want no part of it.

Seventy-three percent of all firms (59% of small employers) have an EAP. But how well does the typical EAP work? Not as well as we’d hope. A Mid America Coalition on Health Care study found:

• just 50% of 6,400 workers surveyed said they’d use the EAP if they felt overwhelmed by personal issues, and
• one-third said they didn’t even know how to access its resources.

The good news: Firms like yours have seen dramatic improvements in three relatively simple steps

1. Employee attitude surveys

The best starting place: Take the pulse of your employees with a short, confidential attitude survey.

Objectives: Ask employees if they know how to use the EAP’s resources. Then test workers’ knowledge and opinions of depression and other personal issues that may affect their workplace performance and/or safety. In the final section, find out how employees would handle a serious personal issue.

In other words, find out where your people would likely turn for help. Would workers seek out the EAP? Would they prefer to discuss the issue with their family doctor? A mental health professional?

The Mid America Coalition’s survey remains an excellent design model from which to craft a survey for your own employees.

2. Promote EAP through education

Your survey data should help you pinpoint areas where employees need more education about your EAP. Some awareness-boosting techniques that have gotten results:

• Lunch-and-learn sessions. Possible topics include dealing with personal-finance stress, caring for elderly parents, understanding depression or dealing with a dependent who has potential mental health issues.
• Employee newsletter. If you have a benefits newsletter, spotlight the EAP from time to time. Some companies without newsletters have done e-mail campaigns or targeted mailings instead.
• Workplace posters spotlighting EAP. The ones that work best are often posters designed around a specific theme (e.g., anxiety about personal debt) rather than a general “need help?” message. In addition to posters, you may want to distribute wallet cards with EAP contact info.

Need help finding educational material? There’s lots of free EAP-related handouts and FAQs here. Remember: When doing EAP education, constantly remind employees that the program is strictly confidential.

3. Work with supervisors

For legal reasons, supervisors need to tread carefully when they suspect an employee has a mental health issue.

What you don’t want: supervisors taking disciplinary actions without consulting HR or playing amateur psychologist and “diagnosing” the employee’s problems. Here is a PDF of some proven tips and talking points for doing supervisor-specific EAP education.

HIPAA compliance: Beware non-discrimination issues

HIPAA’s non-discrimination rules impact both mental health benefits and general health plans. Under current interpretations, health plans can no longer have benefits exclusions that deny benefits for injuries resulting directly or indirectly from pre-existing mental health issues.

That’s true even if the psychological condition wasn’t diagnosed until after the injury and even if the injury was self-inflicted. Example: Suppose an employee gets hurt in a workplace accident he or she caused. After the fact, the employee is diagnosed with a mood disorder that previously escaped detection by the employee’s doctor.

Under current regs, HIPAA-covered plans can’t deny benefits. This puts employers in a bind. Mental health issues like depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder are among the medical conditions that’re most likely to go undiagnosed or underdiagnosed.

That’s why, in most organizations, having a strong EAP is one of your best compliance tools.