Employee Assistance - Assignment Example

Burke and D. Sharar, originally published in the Journal of Employee Assistance and titled “Do 'Free' EAPs Offer Discernible Value?” In fact, imbedded EAPs are quite common, cost effective, and usually exist unknown to the employees in a given company. There is, of course, a fee that is much more minimal than paying for EAPs that are separate entities. This act of embedding the product into the company’s benefits gets mixed reactions from the different parties involved. Human resource professionals seem to have divergent views on EAPs.

Smaller businesses tend to be entirely undereducated about the differences and details between “free” and “fee” based EAPs. Most are simply aware that it is part of the benefits provided, and that is about it. Consultants feel, according to the authors, that it is the employers that underpromote and underencourage the EAPs within a company. They believe that, although the company may be saving monies, they are diluting and forgetting the programs that are available. In a similar way, EA professionals believe that the “free” EAPs allow employers to disregard and neglect the programs that are available.

Lastly, the employees in many companies are not even aware that the EAPs within their company even exist (Burke & Sharar, 2009). Such resources could be beneficial to some employees who truly need the services that such programs offer. Ultimately, this article makes it very clear that many businesses are not particularly interested in the EAPs their companies embed with their benefit packages. They only provide them in this form because it amounts to financial benefit for the company, not at all for the benefit of their staff; which is a sad and all too common reality of the modern business world.

References Burke, J., & Sharar, D. A. (2009). Do “free” EAPs offer discernible value? A survey of human resources managers, benefits consultants, and eap providers reveals that free eaps are here to stay but attitudes toward them can be changed through research. The Journal of Employee Assistance, 1. Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Do+%27free%27+EAPs+offer+discernible+value%3f+A+survey+of+human+resources.-a0204859223. Article Review 2 Employee assistance programs are either “free” or “fee” based, and they provide services to employees within a company, which can include counseling, dealing with losses and stresses, and mental health along with many concerning issues.

Most of these programs are available to employees of a company, and the employees are not even aware that they exist primarily because they generally are not promoted. However, in an article, in the Wall Street Journal, by S. Wang and titled “Companies Expanding EAP Offerings,” it is explained that this trend is changing. Today, many businesses are actively promoting and encouraging their employees towards the EA programs, which they offer free of cost. This sudden change comes in direct response to the healthcare changes soon to be implemented under the Affordable Care Act.

It is more beneficial, financially, for the businesses to encourage, for example, free mental health services under the EAP as opposed to the more costly mental health coverage that would be offered within the given healthcare coverage. Human resource professionals show a positive response to this sudden change.