Determining the ROI of an EAP

Determining The ROI Of An EAP
Are Federal Employee Assistance Programs Worth the Cost? How Do We Know?

By: Annetta M. G. Davenport

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is designed to provide comprehensive health and wellness services that include non-medical counseling to employees and their family members. With the organization’s business needs in mind, an EAP also provides consultation services to an organization’s leadership about workplace concerns that are impacting productivity and an employee’s performance. But the question is, for organizations such as federal agencies where there are no concrete products to assess whether employees’ performance improved over time, what is the measure that indicates a return on investment (ROI) for an effective performance intervention such as an EAP?

Why would employers invest in an intervention/prevention program such as an EAP to improve employee performance unless they can verify its effectiveness? What could we look at as performance improvement indicators beyond the number of gadgets produced, for instance, when there are no gadgets to count? The ROI is traditionally a financial ratio of the cost of an endeavor to the financial benefit received. However, ROI, such as in the healthcare industry, can also be measured in non-financial terms, e.g., an increase in returning customers or an increase in organizational and employee morale. Here’s a deeper look at how employers can justify that EAPs are worth the cost.

EAPs Boost Perspective

In looking at non-financial ROI, the effectiveness of an intervention for an organization’s human capital has not only to do with changes in employees’ behaviors that are aligned with the identified goals of an organization, but the effectiveness that the intervention has on employees’ attitudes or ways of thinking about the world. This shift in thinking is referred to as second-order change. When employees’ attitudes change about how and why they would approach their roles differently to improve performance, the atmosphere of an organization also changes because an organization’s people are thinking differently and with the goals of improvement in mind. The EAP can be looked at as an organizational asset that is leveraged by managers to provide workplace soft skills and effective leadership skills through trainings that enhance the development of relationships and trust in the workplace among employees working alongside each other. Furthermore, leaders can benefit from EAP services to better navigate high-risk situations ultimately benefiting both their employees and the organization as a whole.

EAPs Develop Career-Readiness Competencies

The EAP is an organizational asset to provide services for employees’ career coaching or work-life balance and self-care skills to enjoy their life’s journey. The EAP is an organizational asset that provides individual counseling services to an individual employee and their family members to build resilience and other life skills in areas such as personal financial or physical health. Managers can be confident of the relevance of the second-order change and the shifts in how employees think differently than before an EAP services intervention because these changes are the basis for several of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) career-readiness competencies. According to NACE, characteristics of career readiness is recognized by many employers as the basic core competencies that an employee must have to be successful in the workforce. This includes the following: career & self-development skills, communication skills, leadership skills, professionalism, teamwork skills, and critical thinking skills. Organizations that invest in their employees by helping develop their career competencies through EAP services increase the organization’s human capital.

Observable Evidence of ROI

When we can observe employees’ behaviors after they engaged in an EAP service, that they are proactive and deliberate in maintaining life-work balance, or when we can observe that team members now communicate effectively after an EAP communication skills training, or supervisors now effectively provide and receive feedback that increases staff morale, we have evidence-based information that the EAP is an effective intervention for performance improvement. Human behavior changes are cumulative as time goes on because people gain competencies as they practice the skills they learn. The ROI becomes even more obvious over time as healthy workplace team relationships develop based on employees’ positive attitudes about gaining interpersonal skills and competencies.

In summary, because many federal agencies do not produce products that we can count as indicators of performance improvement and traditionally computed ROI, we should instead focus on observing employees’ second-order attitude and process changes as evidence of a positive ROI. The ROI becomes more evident over time because people improve their skill sets and gain competencies as they practice and apply what they learn through EAP services intervention. The ROI is eventually also observed in an organization’s workplace atmosphere that reflects employees’ positive attitude change toward work and the relationships among workplace team members.