R. Glenn Kelly | July 17, 2017

 

Grief in the workplace and the EAP ~ Employee Assistance Program

“We already offer our employees an EAP program. We don’t need any further help.”

Perception is reality, right? If one perceives something to be so, true or not, to them it is as right as rain. In business, we learn that it is never our client’s responsibility to change a misperception. Instead, that responsibility falls on us; the provider. So it goes with the grieving employee and the Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) offered by a large majority of businesses in the United States.

In offering the Workforce Capital Recovery Program^© (WCRP) to business leaders around the country, it is often perceived to be similar to, or offered as, a replacement for the EAP already in place by the organization. This holds several misperceptions, all of which are not the responsibility of the employer to change. They remain mine, and mine alone.

These misperceptions include:

• Grief does not impact our productivity
• The WCRP is training/counseling for the grieved employee
• It is similar to an EAP
• It is a replacement for an EAP
• After involvement with an EAP, the grieved employee will just “Get Over It”

In hopes of addressing and changing these perceptions the following is offered:

• An estimated $75.1 Billion Dollars in revenue is lost in U.S. Businesses each and every year!
  • Please click here to refer to the grief index data sheet
• The Workforce Capital Recovery Program^© workshop does not train/counsel the employees
  • The WCRP is training for leadership – Owners, executives, managers & front-line supervisors
    • It certainly is meant, however, to benefit the employee, the safety and wellbeing of coworkers, as well as recover lost revenue
• The WCRP is not similar to an EAP
  • The WCRP trains organizational leaders in awareness, understanding, and successful, compassionate measures to mitigate grief impact on the job
• • Training is conducted by a former business executive, bereaved father, author, and public speaker – renowned for expertise in bereavement support
• The WCRP does NOT replace an EAP
  • EAPs are an extremely valuable tool for anyone experiencing personal crisis
  • Yet, while the grieved employee might seek licensed counseling weekly, monthly or even more infrequently, he or she will be in the workplace daily
  • Employees spend more awake time with those they work with than those at home
  • Daily interactions in the workplace will have a tremendous negative or positive emotional impact on the grieved employee
  • The grieved employee will return to work long before he or she is ready
  • The average Bereavement Leave allowed across the United States is three days
  • The WCRP conditions leaders, and therefore the workplace in methodologies to mitigate the impact and support their greatest assets

• The grieved employee will not Just Get Over It!
  • If you believe this, please sit down for one minute with an employee who has lost a child, spouse or sibling. It could have been ten or twenty years ago, but do ask them if they are over it.

Again, Employee Assistance Programs are an invaluable support system offered by employers for the grieved employees. However, they are not the end all and do all. An EAP will not be the trigger to insure the employee Gets Over It and returns to full productivity.

The Workforce Capital Recovery Program is not similar, nor is it a replacement for the EAP. It works in a whole new way to prepare the workplace, thereby reducing errors in judgement, employee injuries, increased turnover, hiring costs, and Worker’s Comp rates. It is a unique program which could set a company apart from the others in the morale and welfare programs offered to their greatest assets.