Broaden Your Employee Assistance Plan

"Sixteen percent of Australians with debt are finding it difficult to make their payments" according to the latest Australian Debt Study Report by Galaxy Research for Veda Advantage.

The research also found:

• "More than one in ten (12%) of Australians have missed a required minimum payment in the past three months, with many missing two or more essential household payments."
• "Of those Australians with a mortgage, 13% were late paying a household bill in the past three months"

Money is a taboo topic for many people, especially talking about financial difficulties. So you as a manager or employer probably won't have any idea when your team members are financially stressed.

Similarly you may not know when they are emotionally stressed. That is why you engage an Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) provider and promote it to your staff.

Do they know to call your EAP provider?
But does the promotion of your EAP make staff aware they can also call when they are financially stressed? If not many may not event consider calling this confidential service when they miss a mortgage repayment or household bill.

And even if they did call the Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) provider they may not get the help they need. This is since many EAP providers have psychological not financial backgrounds. About the best they can do is refer your financially stressed staff members to a financial counselling service.

"Fine, problem solved" part of you may be inclined to think. Not so.

Will they actually get the help they need?
Who pays for the service once the staff member is referred outside of your EAP provider? Does it stay confidential from you? If not, your staff member may be inclined not to take that next step.

Plus financial counselling services are not qualified, professional financial advisers. The help they can provide is limited.

Broaden your EAP offering
To ensure your valuable, but stressed staff get the urgent help they need with the confidentiality you both want you need to extend your formal employee assistance agreements outside of the traditional providers. You may need at least two providers: one traditional psychologically based, and one financially based.

It's a more urgent imperative than you think. Many calls to EAPs may be the result of relationship stress and breakdown. Research from Relationships Australia show that financial stress is the second largest contributor to relationship stress.

By providing a confidential financial component in your EAP you could be preventing many of the calls to your traditional provider.