Employee Assistance Programs
Employee's mental and physical wellbeing is an important factor if a company wants to be successful and enjoy annual growth and profits, but there are many factors that can distract an employee from performing their duties to the best of their abilities. Many employees suffer from problems such as alcoholism, drug use and rehabilitation, depression, financial and family issues as well as many other others that can affect their behavior and performance on the job. Corporations recognize this threat and have implemented Employee Assistance Programs (EAP's) into their organization to help their employees deal with personal problems to get them back into better health. These programs are set up to be a confidential place to turn if an employee needs someone to turn to if they need help with a situation that they cannot solve themselves. Although as of 1990, fully 80% of Fortune 500 companies had some type of EAP set up, utilization of these programs were low. In order for an EAP to be affective, management has to present the benefits of these programs to employees' more efficiently.
Harding Company
Although Harding Company is a successful, well-run company, their utilization of their company's EAP is extremely low. According to Judy Greenwald, a company that runs a successful EAP should have an involvement of some sorts in the program from 4%-8% of the company. However, only 2% of Harding Company's employees use their EAP and the company wants to know why. The three primary reasons that employees sited as reasons for the low participation was the following: lack of understanding of how the program worked, fear of breach of confidentially, and the denial that there was any problems to discuss in the first place. It ...