Stress Management | Workplace Wellness | EAP

Increasing EAP Utilization: Performance Improvement Plans

Push your organization to reduce its exposure to human capital losses and behavioral risk exposures. Encourage supervisor referrals to the EAP in performance improvement plans. The technique is perfectly consistent with effective employee assistance programming.

A performance improvement plan includes:

A statement concerning the performance issue needing improvement;

The level of work performance expected and a statement that it must be performed on a consistent basis;

Specific technical resources to help the employee improve performance;

A plan for providing feedback with meeting times and with whom and how often these meetings will occur;

How performance improvement will be measured;

Specific consequences that will occur if satisfactory performance is not forthcoming.

A written supervisor referral to the EAP should be included. Why it’s needed: Job performance is unsatisfactory despite management’s attempt to improve it, and this is the sole basis for a supervisor referral to any EAP.

The most common reasons that a supervisor referral may not be included in a performance improvement plan are:

The company doesn’t see this as the role of an EAP;
The supervisor is not aware of any personal problems that could contribute to the employee’s performance problems;
It’s never been done before.

All three reasons directly relate to management education on the practical use of employee assistance programs.