Warren Shepell has had a front-row seat for the evolution of how mental health has been treated in the workplace.
Shepell was the pioneer and founder of employee assistance programs in Canada. He launched his first one in 1979 while working as an organizational consultant, after human resources professionals started referring employees struggling with mental-health challenges to him for counselling. When the North York Board of Education put out a request for proposals for a counselling service for employees, Shepell’s nascent EAP company received the contract. Roughly five million clients have received support from one of Shepell’s EAP services.
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“One of the things I had to convince workplace managers to do was to accept the idea was they were the ones responsible for helping people, that people didn’t leave their problems at the workplace doorstep . . . so if these problems were not addressed, then indeed their productivity and contribution to the organization suffered greatly,” said Shepell, now a psychologist and human resources consultant at EHN Canada, during a fireside chat at Benefits Canada’s 2024 Mental Health Summit in June.
According to a recent report by Statistics Canada, more than a third of Canadians believe their mental-health needs are being only partially met or not met at all. While EAPs are part of the solution, employees need to be made more comfortable with the option and reminded to access it when they need it, he said. Most importantly, EAPs have to be perceived as valuable. “Employees have to feel that using the EAP service has made a difference in their life.”
For a long time, EAPs have been implemented as very short-term solutions, with employees getting access to two or three sessions before being referred to a mental-health professional. Over time, some HR managers realized employees often couldn’t afford the cost of a mental health professional and didn’t take the referral and that more sessions through the EAP were necessary. But most continue to treat it as a solution for immediate and short-term problems. While Shepell said his intention was to make EAPs a longer-term model, employers often had budget constraints.
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“Short-term EAP solutions are not enough. We have to increase the number of sessions so people get valuable and effective therapy and they need to be referred on to specialized service if it’s needed — and that referral needs to be managed in a way that employees feel good about it.”
To ensure EAPs remain relevant in the coming years, he recommended that employers shift to a longer-term counselling model.
EAP counsellors also need to be empowered to make referrals for employees who are further along the mental health-symptom severity spectrum who need additional support, such as to intensive programs for employees with moderate mental-health symptoms. EHN’s six-week intensive program includes 10 hours per week of individual and group therapy and a year of after-care following the intensive portion, he noted.
Also speaking during the session, Suanne Wong, senior director of business development strategy and operations at EHN Canada, noted EAPs could also evolve to provide a form of navigation support, by helping employees choose between various referral options and determine the appropriate next steps for their care.
Read more coverage of the 2024 Mental Health Summit.