Help your employees manage their holiday stress, Promote your EAP!
With the stress of the holidays, your employees may need some assistance with a variety of life challenges. This is a good time to promote your company’s Employee Assistance Program and let the employees know that they have an employer that cares for them. Most EAPs are designed to help with many facets of stress management, including mental health, substance abuse, work-life balance, marriage, family and relationship issues, and legal or financial concerns.
The services through your company’s EAP are confidential and the employees can access them in the comfort of their own home through a website or a phone call. It is a win, win for everyone. Once the employee reaches out for help managing their concerns it will mean they are not missing time away from work, their productivity will not decline due to stress, the chance of a possible workplace accident due lack of concentration will decrease, and the employee will be more likely to stay with your company and therefore decreasing turnover rates.
Since we can all agree that this service is vitally important to the health of your business, the next phase is to plan your marketing campaign. A multi-media approach is the best strategy which entails digital, print, and personal promotion. The personal promotion from a manager or fellow coworker, also known as word-of-mouth advertising, is the best promotion because they can explain the concept and handle the concerns and questions about the EAP’s offerings. I have listed several promotional examples below:
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Personal Promotion | |
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Posters/flyers | Promote at staff meetings, have managers promoting within their own departments. |
| Intranet promotion | Table tents in breakrooms |
Be aware of any changes in behavior in your employees and remind them of the services available. |
| Employee facebook page | Payroll stuffers |
Health Fairs- invite EAP representative |
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Webinars |
Wallet cards |
Share success stories |
After reviewing several studies of EAP utilization, statistics have shown that a very small percentage of employees and families are using this service. With education about EAPs and proper promotion you can increase awareness of the offerings and decrease the skeptic’s concerns about confidentiality and stigmas associated with mental health.
Let’s plan to make this a stress free holiday for your employees and your workplace. If you need assistance with your EAP promotion, please feel free to contact me, tblocker@w3ins.com. If your company does not offer an EAP your WWW representative can obtain plan details and cost for your review.