Chapter 27 - § 27.6 • EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 27.6 • EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

Many employers have established in-house "employee assistance programs" (EAP) that help employees deal with personal problems, criminal charges, financial difficulties, job troubles, and the like. Other employers engage outside consulting firms to provide such services. Such firms can tailor their product to a particular employer's workforce, industry, and location, and generally charge a monthly fee based on the number of employees served.

Whether run in house or through an outside firm, the keys to a successful EAP include:

• Confidentiality. Employees will not use an EAP unless they are confident that they may do so discreetly, and without fear that management or their co-workers will learn of the often-sensitive and personal information shared with EAP counselors. Likewise, employers need not and generally should not know about most of the problems an employee might take to an EAP counselor, because most such information cannot lawfully form the basis for disciplinary action, and therefore can only create unhelpful inference if injected into the workplace.

• Availability. Employees most often reach out to EAPs in times of crisis. A nine-to-five operation with no on-call access is useless in many such circumstances.

• Professionalism. Employees moved to reach out to an EAP need answers, usually quickly. The EAP staff must be

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