Employees spend most of their waking hours at work. They face countless stress and challenges in the performance of their jobs. Sometimes these issues can lead to reduced productivity, anxieties, interval conflicts, absenteeism, and other negative outcomes. Employee assistance programs aim to deal with these issues head-on but in a manner that is respectful to each individual. The services are typically offered voluntarily with worker privacy and confidentiality is respected. Since most businesses are unlikely to have a dedicated psychologist on staff, they generally hire a third-party EAP NSW provider to secure the services as needed. These may include the following:
Employee Counselling
It is not uncommon for people to suffer from a mental illness. It is estimated that 20% of the population is dealing with various mental issues at any time. That means about 1 in 5 employees could be grappling with issues that they may be ill-equipped to handle. These include depression, panic attacks, anxieties, addictions, and stress. These are not just individual problems because they can spill out into their work. Mental issues can result in decreased productivity, increased conflicts, costly errors, physical sickness, a rise in absences, and greater incidents of tardiness. Left unchecked, morale will go down while turnover will go up.
Conflict Resolution
EAP providers can offer conflict resolution services. They can mediate in situations that involve escalating tensions between coworkers or between managers and their subordinates. It is important to de-escalate these as early as possible as mounting ill feelings can lead to terrible actions. There have been many incidents of people who have come to blows or have sabotaged each other’s projects to the detriment of the company’s resources and reputation. Someone needs to intervene effectively so these do not happen.
Critical Incident Management
EAP NSW may also be called in for critical incident management. They can help employees deal with major trauma in the workplace in the event of death, robbery, accidental injury, workplace suicide, violence, and similar situations. Witnesses may be shaken by these incidents with some suffering from depression or PTSD as a result. They need to be given all of the support that they require to deal with what occurred and guide them back to normalcy.
Staff Training
The staff may also receive training to make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They could be in sessions discussion mindfulness and wellbeing, mental health awareness, team leadership, stress management, positive psychology, and other topics.
