Educating Organizational Consumers about Employee Assistance Programs

Abstract

There has been an exponential growth of employee assistance programs but a relative dearth of objective information about them available to organizational decision makers. Organizational consumers of employee assistance programs are often faced with a myriad of information about workplace strategies from purveyors of various programs or others with vested interests, but they have little in the way of solid information with which to evaluate these various organizational interventions. Working from a base of research experience, this paper presents a scenario where an employee assistance program can contribute solutions to organizational problems in addition to helping troubled employees. It specifies the core technology and goals of employee assistance programs, and distinguishes employee assistance programs from parallel workplace strategies. Perspectives on assessing the effectiveness of employee assistance programs by balancing individual client and organizational outcomes are discussed.