Only a tenth of HR feels that employees value their employee assistance program (EAP) and an even smaller amount use it, raising the opinion this is due to how badly communicated employee benefits are.
This came from research conducted by Towergate Health & Protection, an independent insurance broking service for businesses and individuals who specialise in health and wellbeing advice. They found that only 10 per cent of HR feel employees see their EAP as a valued service and only 5 per cent use it.
The vast majority of HR (90 per cent) feel it is their responsibility to communicate benefits to their employees, whereas only 18 per cent use internal marketing or communications departments.
Towergate believes in order for “health and wellbeing benefits to be valued and utilised, they need to be understood, and this means having a clear communications plan.”
The health and wellbeing advice business explained that employees are less likely to be aware of benefits if they are not regularly communicated or explained to staff.
Brett Hill, distribution director for Towergate Health & Protection said:
There’s clearly a disconnect between what employers are doing to support the mental wellbeing of their staff and what support employees are aware of.
If companies want their work in supporting mental wellbeing to really make a difference, ie for employees to be aware of that help, to understand what it entails, value it, use it, and get support when they need it, communication needs to take centre stage.
This is the second time this week’s communication has been seen as a pivotal problem in employee relations as 49 per cent of permanent employees believe they are being paid unfairly and that this perception is being driven by their bosses’ lack of communication around pay.
This was discovered by the CIPD’s report, ‘Reward Management 2019’, which also found that 66 per cent believe that most people in their organisation are not being paid fairly.
Towergate spoke to 39 HR managers who represent over 17,000 employees collectively to gather these results.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
