One of Britain’s largest financial and employee benefits consultancies has recorded an eight-week return-to-work rate of 38% at one of its clients.
Towergate Health & Protection says its work with an employee assistance programme (EAP) provider has helped “huge numbers” of employees back to work
The EBC’s statistics show that between February 2020 to January 2021 – at the height of the pandemic – there were nearly 9,000 engagements with one EAP provider alone in the 12-month period. Of those employees who were absent from work prior to starting therapy, 38% were back at work within eight weeks of therapy – meaning at least one session per week.
The majority of the calls (43%) were classified as “mental health issues” (43%).
But the statistics also seem to show how EAPs work outside of that scope, with 21% of all calls being about “legal issues”, 9% about “relationships” and 9% “work-related”.
For counselling calls, anxiety was the greatest reason for employees to make contact, followed by “low mood”, “issues relating to a partner”, “depression”, “bereavement” and “work-related stress”.
The majority of EAP providers and psychiatrists in the UK use “nationalised” or “generalised” scoring systems to analyse impact and engagement.
The “generalised anxiety disorder” GAD-7 and patient health questionnaire PHQ-9 scoring systems were used in Towergate’s analysis. These are designed to facilitate measurement of anxiety disorders and depressive disorders respectively and are national standards used by GPs and psychiatrists to ascertain the severity of the issue.
A spokesperson for Towergate said that following “structured therapy”, the figures for 2020 showed a 53.5% improvement in GAD-7 results and 57.5% improvement in PHQ-9 scores, demonstrating a “significant positive effect in wellbeing” as a result of support from the EAP.
Brett Hill, distribution director at Towergate Health & Protection, said that “during the pandemic, and beyond, keeping valued employees at work, or helping them to return to work, must be a major aim of any health and wellbeing programme.”
He said: “It is really good to be able to prove the return on investment of such programmes, specifically counselling and EAPs, and to see the positive impact they have for employees and, consequently, employers.”
The Towergate Health & Protection figures are based on 8,872 engagements in the period from February 2020 to January 2021 inclusive.