Employee assistance programmes: The emperor's new clothes of stress management?

Innovation in Public Sector Management Control Systems in the Context of New Public Management: A Case of an Australian Public Sector Organization

“…In the researched organization, this program is designed to address and improve employees' personal life and work performance which is adversely affected by personal or work-related problems. This finding is consistent with the results observed by Arthur (2000) that employee assistance programs increasingly provide benefits to reduce the effects of 'stress' on individuals and organizations; provide a 'management tool' to improve workplace performance and productivity; and respond to critical incidents.…”

EAP utilization patterns and employee absenteeism: Results of an empirical, 3-year longitudinal study in a national Canadian retail corporation.

“…Many employers and EAP providers (e.g., Every & Leong, 1994;Greenwood et al, 2005;Hargrave, Hiatt, Alexander, & Shaffer, 2008;Petersen, 1972;Selvik et al, 2004) claim that EAP services are effective in reducing employees' emotional and personal problems and therefore assume that EAPs indirectly reduce absenteeism and disability. Despite these claims, however, few empirically sound studies have examined whether EAPs in fact have a positive impact on organizational-level outcome measures (Arthur, 2000;Courtois et al, 2004). The studies that do report organizational outcomes (e.g., Alander & Campbell, 1975;Asma, Hilker, Shevlin, & Golden, 1980;Freedberg & Johnston, 1979;Foote, Erfurt, Strauch, & Guzzardo, 1978;Groeneveld & Shain, 1985;Petersen, 1972) were typically focused on EAP services that primarily dealt exclusively with alcohol problems and cases in which supervisors were required to refer employees who, they suspected, abused alcohol to the company's EAP (Macdonald et al, 2000).…”

“…The studies that do report organizational outcomes (e.g., Alander & Campbell, 1975;Asma, Hilker, Shevlin, & Golden, 1980;Freedberg & Johnston, 1979;Foote, Erfurt, Strauch, & Guzzardo, 1978;Groeneveld & Shain, 1985;Petersen, 1972) were typically focused on EAP services that primarily dealt exclusively with alcohol problems and cases in which supervisors were required to refer employees who, they suspected, abused alcohol to the company's EAP (Macdonald et al, 2000). Because most EAPs today are broad brush, the earlier research cannot be assumed to generalize (Arthur, 2000;Macdonald et al, 2000).…”

“…Although subjective outcomes showed positive findings, a significant limitation of these studies is the risk of self-report and retrospective bias. Numerous authors have called for studies that are less biased and more methodologically sound (Arthur, 2000;Lennox, Sharar, & Burke, 2009;Pompe & Sharar, 2008;Tisone, 2008). Clearly, it remains to be established whether these positive organizational absenteeism outcomes will replicate when more objective measures of absenteeism are used.…”

The Contribution of Occupational Health Psychology to the Promotion of Well-Being at Work: an Evaluation of EAPS in the UK and China

“…In the highly developed areas of China, the EAPs were introduced primarily by large international corporations and some government departments followingAmerica andthe UK emphasizing on expatriate problems.However, in some rural areas of China,because of the limitations of expertise resources and financial supports, organizations were unlikely to provide EAPs (Arthur, 2000). In terms of the techniques of EAPs based on occupational health psychology, it seems that there is only a few numbers of professionals in this field in China nowadays so thatdemand exceeds supply.…”