An Employee Assistance Program is an initiative which organizations can deploy to improve and optimize the performance and productivity of their employees.
The programs are a mix of interventions designed to help manage the unavoidable human angle challenges which employees battle on a daily basis. These challenges range from family issues to health issues, career or work issues, to even struggles with diverse addictions including drugs and other substances.
Employee Assistance programs are designed to intervene and provide first level support to the employee with the help of assessment tools, short counselling programs and credible referral systems to help employees overcome both mental and emotional distractions, declutter, gain clarity, refocus, energize and then return to contributing optimally and effectively in the organization.
At Gracehill Behavioral Health Services; a Mental Health consulting practice where I am a co-founder, we offer Employee Assistance Programs either directly to corporate organizations or through partner health management organizations (HMOs). We do this seamlessly through our existing instituted systems and structures such as
- An existing, seasoned team of full time and visiting psychiatrists, psychotherapists and trained counsellors who already provide care for patients through our psychiatry facility; ‘The Gracehill Place’ – a 30 bed facility psychiatry treatment and rehab center located in the heart of Lagos, Nigeria.
- Access to data from research and insights from providing mental health care for over a decade either directly to individuals or through organizations. In our experience, this has contributed to re-assuring clients who assume their challenges are peculiar or unique to them or their organization.
- A network of diverse and varied subject matter experts in the various human challenge areas such as finance, family, parenting, career and more.
- As one of the organizations who pioneered and continue to actively advance the cause of mental health awareness and private psychiatry care in Nigeria, we actively disseminate information via periodic newsletters, webinars and learning programs for client organizations.
- In addition to our fully resourced clinical team, we also have a vibrant administrative team dedicated to the daily operation of the programs with respect to content management, appointment bookings , event management and more.
As Director Employee Assistance Programs at Gracehill Behavioral Health Services, my responsibility is to create awareness for EAP in Nigeria and oversee the efficient and seamless delivery of the programs to employees of client organizations. My experience as a business owner, Head of HR and an employee at various seasons enable me to design programs and interventions tailored to the context of the client organization in a valuable and impactful manner. This experience is clearly impactful especially where organizations require intervention beyond the employee level but require support at the level of teams and organizations for conflict resolution and mediation, trauma counsel, corporate drug and substance abuse awareness programs and more.
EAP has experienced increased uptake by organizations, especially post the emergence of the COVID-19 Pandemic. We find that acceptance and adoption of the service has increased by at least up to 10% by organizations following the pandemic, while organizations who were already signed up to the service have recorded up to a 40% patronage of the service post the pandemic disruption.