Employee assistance plans (EAPs) have evolved and improved significantly in recent years, yet awareness remains relatively low—among plan sponsors as well as plan members.
At the same time, members increasingly struggle with their mental health. According to the 2024 Benefits Canada Healthcare Survey, 22 per cent of plan members reported a current diagnosis of anxiety, depression or other mental-health condition, up from 18 per cent in 2023. A mental-health condition has been the top diagnosis among plan members since 2019.
“It’s time to drive that utilization [of the EAP] up,” said Carolyne Eagan, President, Benefits Alliance, during a recent Benefits Alliance Voice podcast with Melanie Dobler, Director, Mental Health Solutions, Sun Life Health.
In this article, Take 5 for Wellness captures some of the key takeaways from their conversation, including tips on how to build awareness. Click here to catch the full podcast, “The Evolution of Employee Assistance Plans.”
Also available to plan sponsors is “From the back room to the top shelf” an easy-to-read thought leadership piece by Sun Life that summarizes the evolution of EAPs.
Plan sponsors may be surprised to learn that employees often don’t realize that EAPs provide highly accessible mental-health supports, noted Dobler. Or that many continue to have the misconception that EAPs are for emergency situations only, when EAPs are ideally equipped to provide supports that can help prevent crises.
The key to creating awareness is to “normalize that you have these resources available,” said Dobler. “Use every opportunity possible to promote your EAP.”
Awareness begins when an employee is hired and onboarded. Dobler then recommended ongoing communications using real-life examples to illustrate when the EAP can help. Each communication would highlight a specific area of support, for example, mental health, women’s health, financial health or caregiving, etc.
A growing number of EAPs today also provide manager coaching. For example, EAP coaching can help managers develop a plan to successfully reintegrate employees returning from disability leave. Research by Ipsos found that 90 per cent of managers said they would value additional support on return-to-work issues. An EAP is a great resource for this help.
And of course, managers themselves are key to normalizing the use of EAPs, whether during private conversations or in response to a workplace crisis. “From a crisis perspective, that’s a really great way of arming your managers and your people leaders with tools that they can use to help employees,” said Dobler.
Quick and convenient access to care is another key message. “Accessing mental health professionals and mental healthcare in the public system is very challenging,” said Dobler. “One of the benefits of an EAP is certainly that people can get an appointment much more quickly with a provider.”
Offering that support virtually is also an invaluable component of EAPs. “People want to be able to connect at all different times of day, in the convenience of their own home,” noted Dobler.
For those plan sponsors still weighing the value of introducing an EAP, Dobler urged them to consider it a cornerstone of their wellness strategy. “An EAP is a great place to start because it offers so many different supports for so many different needs,” she said.
Benefits Alliance thanks Sun Life, a platinum preferred solutions provider, for participating in this article and its parent podcast.