In order to make sure that your employees give out their best towards achieving organizational goals it is important to make your employees stress free while at work. An employee may get stressed due to many on-the-job as well as off-the-job factors. A manager or a business owner has no control over the off-the-job factors that stress out their employees and thus affect their productivity.

As a result the performance of the employee as well as his/her morale goes down rapidly. Due to this very reason it is important to introduce Employee Assistance program or Plans (EAP) for your firm.

EAP’s are usually considered as one of the important ‘benefits’ from the company to its employees. Some businesses even hire an Employee Assistance Manager to smoothly implement the Employee Assistance Plan.

The following are the features of a well developed Employee Assistance Program – EAP are mostly free and sometimes may involve some related cost to the employee. How a particular employee is assisted using EAP is always held confidential. As part of the EAP, an employee receives expert counseling, advice and sometimes referrals.

EAP therefore targets an employee’s mental and emotional health. EAP helps in maintaining an easy balance between work and personal life of the employee.

EAP is usually administered by a third party, and that is why information given by employees is treated in highly confidential manner. EAP’s are also administered by health insurance companies or any other insurer related to the firm.

Employees can join an Employee Assistance Program if they face any of the following problems in their personal life – Alcohol or any other substance abuse, bereavement or separation, marital problems, family relationship problems, weight issues, health issues, financial problems, legal problems etc.

Employee Assistance Program usually involves face to face counseling by experts. Sometimes counseling services are provided over phone too. Apart from this employees are assisted using educational materials and similar successful case studies.

Having a well developed Employee Assistance Program in your firm helps you in saving a lot of employee related costs. For example, you don’t have to spend any extra amount to increase your employees’ morale (family outing etc), a stress free employee is usually healthy and requires less medical leave- leading to a fall in absenteeism rate and even to fewer employee turnover from the firm.