How to review your EAP provider to ensure they are fit-for-purpose for your workplace
A growing understanding of Psychosocial Risk Management (PRSM) in the workplace, increasing regulatory requirements and a new focus on leadership accountability for employee wellbeing is seeing more businesses reviewing their EAP programmes. Ensuring you have the right employee wellbeing support system for your workforce is critical, but how can evaluate your provider?
This guide provides the tools business owners, managers, Health and Safety, and People and Culture leaders need to evaluate EAP providers for the modern workplace. It provides an insight into the new technologies businesses of all sizes are using to increase productivity and improve employee wellbeing and gives you the right questions to ask.
What is an EAP Provider?
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) of the past were a limited way for organisations to offer counselling sessions for staff in need. Usually organised through a free call line, the wait for a therapist was often long and little choice in the type of therapy or therapist was offered. As the proverbial “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”, the EAPs of old were often viewed with suspicion by staff, did little to promote self-management of mental wellbeing and gave organisations limited visibility of the overall state of their people or issues that could arise.
Much has changed in the world of EAP since those days. As accountability for employee wellbeing has increasingly been directed at business owners and leaders, and as the regulatory environment around psychosocial risk management has grown, expectations of what an EAP programme should deliver have changed significantly.
A modern EAP service will:
- Improve productivity and reduce absenteeism with proven 4:1 ROI
- Provide visibility over emerging employee wellbeing themes through powerful and confidential data analytics
- Identify and manage psychosocial risks in the workplace
- Deliver useful, evidence-based self-management tools for all employees to build mental resilience
- When 1:1 therapy is needed, ensure it is easy to access, relevant to the employee’s issue and convenient (right place and right time for them)
- Provide regular webinars, podcasts and access to thought leadership for business leaders and employees
- Reduce stigma and
Eensure wellbeing culture is deeply embedded throughout the organisation.
In 2025, the best EAPs have been reframed from reactive support to proactive and preventative mental health and wellbeing.
So what questions should you be asking of your provider?
How many employees actually use your EAP service?
Most EAP providers have a utilisation rate of 2-3%, which is significantly less than the 25% of the general population who will be experiencing mental health concerns at any given time. That means the investment you are making in EAP is reaching only a fraction of the people who need it – a major lost opportunity.
At Clearhead we are committed to helping employers ensure no one is left behind. In 2024, Clearhead saw an average of 36% engagement with our digital tools amongst our top clients. Reaching only a small percentage of your people is not a good return on investment - we can help you engage more of your employees with the support you provide.
Does your EAP provider offer proactive support for employees, before mental health challenges become a crisis?
An offer of therapy sessions for employees at risk is no longer enough, and it may be costing your business already in loss of productivity and absenteeism.
By the time someone has reached a crisis point, they are likely to have been experiencing severe stress and mental health issues for a long time. Reactive counselling of three sessions is usually not going to make enough impact to turn things around.
Clearhead is centred around providing proactive and personalised support. It helps employees build self-awareness and resilience skills so they are managing their wellbeing and have greater ability to avoid reaching crisis point.
Clearhead’s combination of personalised self-help tools via our Digital Wellbeing Assistant, coupled with athe ability to easily book a counselling session through a confidential online booking system, supports mental wellbeing through all stages of health. Our clinicians know that addressing smaller issues effectively and early will often help people to develop new skills and resilience, enabling them to cope better in future. This is cost-effective for employers and better for the employee.
Does your EAP provider offer the right mental health professionals for your people?
Many EAP providers have a surprising lack of qualified, varied therapists. It is often difficult getting access to psychologists within a short timeframe, and they don’t tend to have therapists with a range of specialties, such as helping with addiction, or specific disorders or challenges.
A modern EAP provider must reduce the barriers to seeking help and that includes providing a choice of therapy and an easy and confidential online booking system so that employees can select the best match for them. Having to provide sensitive information over the phone is a real hurdle for many people and often a therapist will be assigned based only on their availability.
Clearhead has a network of more than 400 mental health professionals, career coaches, and financial advisory professionals, and almost a third are registered psychologists. This large pool of professionals ensures we can cover the broad spectrum of wellbeing needs, while our integrated booking calendar allows employees to select who, how and when they want to see a specialist.
If the choice is too great, our MatchMe service will select the three most compatible therapists from our database, based on a client’s needs. Even with these considerable benefits, the average Clearhead counselling session cost is roughly the same as most EAP providers.
What is the wait time to see a therapist with your EAP provider?
Therapy backlogs and waiting lists mean it can take weeks between booking therapy and actually seeing a counsellor through traditional EAP services.
If staff don’t want to use the EAP service and opt to go through the public system, it can be even worse. Wait times tend to be around three months.
Clearhead has significantly shorter wait times for employees to receive professional support through our large network of therapists. Being able to filter therapists, based on real time availability, increases the chance of being able to see someone quickly, including same day appointments when required.
Is support available 24/7?
Many traditional EAP providers make support available during office hours only. Often, they have a number for employees to call, but that call will go unanswered outside set hours.
Clearhead makes support available at all times in a range of ways. Our on-call 24/7 phone line, and Digital Wellbeing Assistant, are always available to recommend personalized coping tools or other techniques, and to book a therapy session.
What has been the feedback from employees about your EAP?
The best judge of how well your EAP is performing is the people it’s there to help. Many EAP providers will not offer clients the ability to provide feedback, leaving managers in the dark about how well the service is working.
In teams that use Clearhead as their EAP provider, 83% of employees say its tools are helpful for their challenges and 97% say the therapy they had through Clearhead was helpful.
We know this because we check in with every employee individually, and anonymously, after every interaction they have with either a self-help tool or a therapist. If they say a counselling session was unhelpful, Clearhead works with them to find a therapist who is better suited to them and their challenges.
If your EAP provider doesn’t collate feedback, ask your managers what they’ve heard directly from their staff. Alternatively, you can send out a short, anonymous survey to all employees asking how useful they’ve found it.
Does your EAP provide high quality data insights?
The increasing focus on Psychosocial Risk Management and organisational wellbeing requires timely, relevant, confidential and secure data to capture mental health and wellbeing indicators. Increasingly legislation requires active reporting but too often the EAPs of old provide little more than how many counselling sessions have been delivered and what high level issues people are seeking therapy for.
As more accountability for the wellbeing of employees is being directed at owners and managers, much more sophisticated data analytics is required.
For large businesses, Clearhead can provide a comprehensive, deep dive report, prepared by our in-house team of psychologists. This will highlight workplace wellbeing trends and the psychosocial factors that have negative sentiment (risks) and positive sentiment (protective factors). This detailed analysis is akin to an advanced culture insights tool.
Our smaller clients are also able to access anonymised data on the issues facing their people and what they are reporting via our platform. This is very useful for providing early indications of challenges arising in the workplace.
If you want to learn more about Psychosocial Risk Management (PRSM) and how organisations are ensuring they are keeping their people safe, read more in this Whitepaper: “Unlocking the Potential of EAP: A Vital Cog in Managing Psychosocial Risks".
A final word
Good organisational management and wellbeing support are no longer seen as an employee benefit; it is an expectation of business owners and leaders, and increasingly part of Health and Safety legislation. well-designed and delivered EAP provider will provide a tangible return on investment.
At Clearhead we have a suite of packages designed for businesses large and small, which offer proactive wellbeing risk management, 24/7 access, the widest and most accessible range of therapists and powerful data analytics. If you feel your EAP provider doesn’t match up, contact us for a demonstration of our service.