The National Behavioral Consortium Industry Profile of External EAP Vendors

Abstract

It is common practice in many professions, fields, and industries to disseminate comparative information. Absent this vital resource an individual company cannot accurately evaluate their performance against a similar cohort and therefore must rely upon anecdotal information. The findings of this study address this deficiency in the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) field by reporting empirically derived comparative data for external providers of EAP services. During 2012 the National Behavioral Consortium obtained a convenience sample of 82 external EAP vendors, located primarily in the United States and Canada and 10 other countries and ranging in size from local providers to global business enterprises. The combined customer base represented by these vendors included more than 35,000 client companies and over 164 million total covered lives. The 44 survey items addressed eight categories: (1) company profile, (2) staffing, (3) customer profile, (4) utilization metrics, (5) survey tools and outcomes, (6) business management, (7) business development, and (8) forecasting the future of EAP. Results reveal a wide range between vendors on most of these factors. Comparisons were also conducted between vendors based on market size, country, and pricing model. Implications for operational practice and business development are discussed along with considerations for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• counseling
• EAP
• metrics
• utilization
• workplace wellness
• work/life

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by a grant from the Employee Assistance Research Foundation (www.eapfoundation.org) to the National Behavioral Consortium with Dr. Granberry as the Principal Investigator. This article is coauthored with each author contributing equally to this project and the order of authorship determined alphabetically.

Notes

Note. N = 82 vendors for all items.

Note. n =number of vendors.

Note. EAP = Employee Assistance Program; COA = Council on Accreditation. CEAP = Certified Employee Assistance Professional.

^a Total n = 82 vendors, United States n = 58, Canada n = 12, International n = 12.

^b Total n = 76 vendors, United States n = 53, Canada n = 11, International n = 12.

Note. n = number of vendors.

Note. n = number of vendors. High ratings: 4 = often; 5 = almost always.

Note. n = number of vendors.

Note. n = number of vendors. High ratings: 4 = high; 5 = very high.

Note. Data is for the entire book of business in year 2011 at each EAP vendor. n = number of vendors.

^a  = Combination of total EAP counseling sessions and total EAP organizational services.

^b  = Combination of total EAP counseling sessions, total EAP organizational services and total work/life services (if vendor provided all three kinds of services).

Note. n = number of vendors.

Note. The number of vendors is listed in the table.

Note. Sample size varies by analysis. k = 1,000. NA = not applicable. multiple = too many options to list in table.

+p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Note. M = mean average; SD = standard deviation; n = number of vendors.

Note. n = number of vendors. Items rated for how frequently clients noted each of the marketing sources as a way that they had become aware of the EAP service. High ratings: 4 = high frequency; 5 = very high frequency.

Note. n = number of vendors. Items for both sets rated for the level of difficulty (defined as high expense and or high time commitment by the EAP) for managing these objectives in the past year. High ratings: 4 = high difficulty; 5 = very high difficulty.

Note. n = 69 vendors for all items. High ratings were 4 = high importance or 5 = very high importance. Each item was rated on a 1 to 5 scale for its impact on contract renewals and new contracts for EAP services at the company in the prior year.

Note. n = 69 vendors for all items. High ratings were 4 = high importance or 5 = very high importance. Each item was rated on a 1 to 5 scale for its importance as a primary, not a secondary, source of why customers did not renew the contracts for EAP services in the prior year.

See the three tables in Appendix 2 for estimated study response totals for vendors with missing data on items for client companies, covered employees and covered lives.

Sampling Support Sources: 1. EAP Industry Trade Associations = Canadian Employee Assistance Program Association; Employee Assistance Collaborative; Employee Assistance Professionals Association and its 78 local EAPA Chapters in most U.S. states; Employee Assistance Roundtable; and Employee Assistance Society of North America; and National Behavioral Consortium. 2. Other Affiliated Trade Associations = Alliance for Work Life Progress/World@Work; Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness; Institute of Health and Productivity Management; National Business Group on Health; Partnership for Workplace Mental Health/American Psychiatric Association Foundation; Risk and Insurance Management Society; Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral for Treatment; Society of Human Resource Managers. 3. Members = 15 Member companies as EAP vendors to send to their e-mail lists. 4. EAP Vendor Support Service Providers = ProtoCall; Crisis Care Network; and EAP data warehouse and reporting software providers, DAYBREAK EAP Software, EAP Expert, and EAP Technology Systems. 5. Academic & Research Experts in EAP Field = 10 + people and members of the research committees for both EAPA and EASNA. 6. Consultants and EAP Industry Leaders = 10 + individuals. 7. Computer Listserv = LinkedIn Groups for EAPA and EASNA. 8. EAP Industry Media Channels = OPEN MINDS newsletter and the Journal of Employee Assistance (EAPA Members). 9. Canadian Market Resources = 10 + individuals. 10. Other Countries Outside of North America = 6 + individuals.

Survey Development Support: The authors are grateful to the following individuals for providing expert guidance on the development of the survey from different EAP market perspectives: George Martin, CorpCare Associates (External EAP in United States); Dr. John Pompe, Caterpillar, Inc. (Internal EAP–Global); Dr. Paul M. Roman, University of Georgia (Research); Dr. Diane Stephenson, Independent Consultant (Hybrid EAP in United States); Tom Shjerven, Harris Rothenberg International (External EAP in United States); Craig Thompson, Homewood Human Solutions (External EFAP in Canada), and Cory Todd, City of Calgary (Human Resources).

Given that the usage profile benchmark found that 80% of all EAP users were employees, this CCR figure slightly overestimates the case level annual usage rate if the goal is to have a metric that features the usage of the EAP by only the employees compared against the population of covered employees (Csiernik, 2003). To account for this alternative definition of utilization, an employee only CCR rate that excludes family and other dependents users of the service would be 20% lower. This reduction results in an adjusted rate of 3.6 employees users of the EAP for counseling per 100 employees per year.

Each of these aggregate counts for sample sizes for survey outcomes include an estimated component for a small number of vendors that had outcome item data but had missing data for their annual survey sample size. In these cases, the average sample size for the other vendors on that outcome item was substituted for the missing data. This adjustment was done for 2 vendors for satisfaction (M sample size added to the total of all other vendors = 5,239 × 2), 2 vendors for overall improvement (M = 5,723 × 2), for 1 vendor for workplace performance (M = 2,429) and 1 vendor for workplace absence (M = 2,558).

Due to the large number of statistical tests performed (i.e., chi-squared and t tests), the details for the nonsignificant tests are not presented. This information is available upon request from the authors. The same note applies to the comparison tests performed by country as well.

Due to the small number of responses, only two of these findings reached statistical significance: contract size = F(2, 48) = 2.45, p = .10; and number of EAP staff per contract = F(2,65) = 7.01, p = .02.

These findings, though consistent with expectations and discussions in the literature, are not fully accurate. This is because the measures tested reflect data from the entire book of business reports for all contracts within each vendor. A better test would be to include data from only the contracts within their book of business that matched their dominant pricing model. Thus, to the extent that the data from the nondominant type of pricing contracts influenced the total book of business data in ways that were not uniform for each pricing group, it adds some unknown variance to the analysis that can muddy the interpretation of the results. This issue is less of a concern, however, given that the majority of contracts within each pricing dominant group were at least the vast majority of the contracts within that pricing group: The capitated dominant pricing model group (n = 61) had on average, 85% of contracts with capitated, 10% with FFS and 5% embedded fee; The fee-for-service dominant pricing model group (n = 10) had on average, 24% of contracts with capitated, 75% with FFS and 1% embedded fee; The embedded fee dominant pricing model group (n = 7) had on average, 11% of contracts with capitated, 11% with FFS and 78% embedded fee.