Employee Assistance Programmes and Counselling

Providing proactive, preventative support and compassionate, reactive care

All of our Employee Assistance Programmes provide your employees with access to free, high-quality, cost-effective support and include the following as standard:

• Unlimited access to our freephone, confidential helpline – our service centres are manned 24/7, 365 days a year, with an in-house team of over 80 BACP accredited counsellors on hand to provide initial support, information and ‘in the moment’ counselling, including for high risk cases
• 24/7 critical incident telephone support
• Legal, debt and financial information and advice services provided by qualified advisors
• Medical information and advice services provided by qualified nurses
• Family care information and advice on issues such as eldercare, childcare and dependent care
• Bereavement support
• Manager consultancy and coaching to help managers effectively support their employees and deal with important or sensitive issues
• Access to an online Health and Wellbeing Portal, which provides a wealth of information on a range of wellbeing topics, along with resources including self-help tools, webinars, fact sheets and mini health checks and links to a variety of trusted support organisations
• Coverage for dependants (immediate family members i.e. spouses/partners and children aged 16 to 24 in full time education, living in the same household).

There are three programmes available to choose from:

• Helpline Only
• Essential EAP
  Our Essential EAP package provides your employees with access to all of the helpline features listed above, plus up to six sessions* of structured telephone or online counselling
• Complete EAP
  Our Complete EAP package includes all of the same features as the Essential EAP package, but your employees will also be eligible for up to six sessions* of face-to-face counselling

All of our programmes operate on a subscription basis – pricing is simple and transparent and based on your employee headcount. With all packages, additional face-to-face counselling can be arranged where appropriate, for an additional fee.

*per employee, per issue, per year

Helping you and your employees to get the best from our service

Letting your employees know what support is available to them is key to ensuring that they get maximum benefit from your EAP. We provide comprehensive implementation support and high-quality marketing materials to help you launch and promote continued awareness and engagement with the service.

Once your EAP is up and running, our Relationship Managers will work closely with you during regular review meetings to evaluate the usage and effectiveness of the service, and supply you with detailed management information reports giving you valuable insights into the psychological wellbeing of your people.

Where structured counselling is being provided as part of your programme, our case management protocols will ensure that the right clinical outcomes are consistently being achieved within appropriate timescales.

Delivering fast, effective results through structured, solution-focused therapy

As an alternative to our Employee Assistance Programmes, we also offer a separate manager-led counselling service, which can be accessed on a ‘pay as you go’ basis and allows managers to directly refer employees whom they feel may benefit from face-to-face counselling support.

Our counselling service focuses on helping employees to deal with specific events or issues (such as bereavement, relationship or family difficulties, or problems at work) that may be contributing to feelings of stress, low mood, anxiety or mild depression, and aims to bring about a positive effect within a brief, set time-frame, usually up to six sessions.

The therapies our counsellors use therefore centre on addressing those psychological behaviours or patterns of thinking that may be affecting an employee’s ability to cope with the challenges they are facing, to try to minimise the impact on their wellbeing and help them to move forward.

While we primarily deliver counselling on a one-to-one basis, we also provide a number of group- and manager-focused support services, including:

• mediation services
• employee and manager coaching programmes
• critical incident support services

Ensuring that your employees always receive the highest standard of care

All of the counsellors in our UK-wide professional network are fully qualified and accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), work in accordance with their ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy and have a minimum of two years’ post qualifying experience.

They also come from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds and specialise in a variety of therapeutic techniques, including trauma-specific interventions such as CBT and EMDR.

This means that whether your employees require online, telephone or face-to-face counselling, we will always be able to assign the most appropriate counsellor for them, based on their individual needs and circumstances.

Our counsellors will arrange all appointments with your employees directly. For face to face appointments, we will always try to schedule sessions within 10 miles of the individual’s work or home address and at a time and location that best suits them.