Policy Matters: Building Employee Assistance Programs to Enhance Workplace Culture

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Business leaders are often heard saying that employees are their greatest assets. The workers who generate the sales and profits that keep a company running year after year are the lifeblood of the company.

Naturally, it follows that investing in those employees should be a top priority. Leaders can anticipate the personal and professional stressors their workforce will face and provide resources to help them handle career and life challenges.

CEOs like Patrick Schueck, head of steel and construction giant Lexicon Inc., understand this. In August, the Little Rock-based company launched a mental health awareness campaign, dubbed Strong as Steel: Building Mental Might, as a complement to the company’s new employee assistance program.

“This is a family-owned business, 56 years old. It was passed to the current CEO, Patrick, from his father Thomas, who started the company. He built the company to take care of his family, so his first concern is taking care of his employees,” said Janell Schmidt, chief human resources officer at Lexicon. “The culture matters, and what drove us to do this is not that anything went wrong, but what keeps Patrick up at night – making sure his people are OK.”

Companies across the state have implemented EAPs and other employee benefits programs that expand far beyond basic incentive packages. Lexicon, in addition to its EAP, also has an on-site health clinic employees can visit for free or a highly reduced cost. In central Arkansas, Conway Regional Health System, along with its EAP, offers tuition reimbursement, gym memberships, paid volunteering time and more.

Companies’ workforces will have different needs, but an EAP can be a good starting point for employee engagement and to show that their workers are more important than their bottom line.

Building an EAP

Schmidt joined Lexicon in January as a seasoned HR professional. She already had a good idea of what an EAP could offer.

“I feel like they’re taken for granted and highly underutilized,” said Schmidt, who was part of the team that this year built a more robust EAP.

From her experience, Schmidt knew that a good EAP is comprehensive, providing support to employees in a number of ways. At a previous job, Schmidt said she utilized the company’s EAP to schedule a daily wake-up call for a chronically late employee, who was then able to turn his situation around.

“Everything is related. People’s lives are complicated. You need a diverse array of services,” she says.

Conway Regional updated its EAP in 2018 to expand the breadth of resources offered. Miranda Hogg, lead content creator for the hospital system, said the company wanted employees to get more use out of the program.

“Employees had limited options for service and could only use the EAP three times per calendar year,” Hogg said. “We needed to invest in tools to build a resilient workforce. Our main focus was to find a specialized resource that offered comprehensive expertise and also provided employees sufficient visits per life issue to get them through tough situations.”

Hogg said since 2018, the hospital system has partnered with SWEAP Connections to provide an EAP to serve the health system, as well as the Conway Regional Rehabilitation Hospital and the Dardanelle Regional Medical Center.

The primary benefits of EAPs are the mental and behavioral health resources offered. Conway Regional provides up to five sessions of counseling per life issue for stressors such as marriage issues, depression or grief and substance abuse, as well as coaching services, crisis intervention and digital resources. Lexicon likewise provides multiple counseling sessions per life issue to employees through its partnership with EAP-provider CuraLinc Healthcare, along with management and supervisor coaching.

Coaching services through EAPs can also help businesses support leadership, train supervisors and prepare employees for management. Conway Regional’s EAP includes employee supervisor training services, leadership consultation and supervisory coaching.

Schmidt said Lexicon will use CuraLinc materials to train employees to be “mental health first responders” in the coming months, giving managers the tools to notice and intervene when an employee is going through a tough time.

“It’s better for the company to make sure people have access to the right resources. It drives culture; if someone’s not doing well, it impacts your culture,” she said.

Both companies’ EAPs additionally provide financial and legal aid services for employees. Many EAPs extend to employees’ family and household members, like roommates.

“If you’ve got someone in your home who’s not OK, that will  impact you too,” Schmidt said.

Gauging the ROI

Lexicon’s Strong as Steel campaign was the official launch of its new EAP and served as a way to spread awareness about the benefits available.

Schmidt said the company used an internal communications app to share daily informational posts about the EAP, positive messages and personal stories acknowledging mental health struggles from Lexicon employees.

“The first one was a kick-off video from Patrick, a personal message about why this was important to him – the employees’ importance, getting health care when you need it,” Schmidt said. “He’s a guy’s guy, and here he is talking about mental health … making it OK to talk about mental health. It’s really powerful.”

Conway Regional has held numerous awareness campaigns about its benefits and provides information about the EAP through internal newsletters and employee orientations.

Schmidt said publicizing EAPs and employee benefits helps the company maximize the value it gets out of such assistance programs. Different companies administer EAPs differently; some price per employee covered and others each time the service is used. The types of services covered by the EAP will also affect the cost.

Hogg said utilization rates of Conway Regional’s EAP are on the higher end, with over 8% of its workforce using the EAP annually, compared with 4-6% of other companies based on nationwide data. Some years, Conway Regional’s utilization rate has been as high as 11%.

Knowing that employees who need help are getting it is not only rewarding, but also gives the company confidence that its workforce is performing at their top level.

“The cost to the organization is affordable and continues to be a worthwhile and necessary investment in our workforce,” she says.

“While we can’t directly trace the (return on investment) of the program for job satisfaction or increased productivity due to the confidentiality of these services, we have seen true success stories for employees who either shared their experience with our EAP or whom we knew were going through difficult life circumstances.”

In the construction industry, being off one’s game can be deadly. Schmidt said even one life impacted makes the cost of the EAP worth it.

“If somebody’s having any sort of crisis, especially in an environment where people are putting themselves at risk, like construction, manufacturing, driving, any of those types of things, if their head’s not on straight because of their own problems or someone in their family needs help or finances are impacting them – they’re not being safe at work,” she said.

“It’s better for the company to make sure people have access to the right care.”