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Employee assistance programs in Australia: the perspectives of organisational leaders across sectors
Author(s) -
Joseph Beulah,
Walker Arlene
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1111/1744-7941.12124
Subject(s) - thematic analysis , business , public relations , order (exchange) , qualitative research , position (finance) , qualitative property , resource (disambiguation) , marketing , sociology , political science , machine learning , computer network , social science , finance , computer science
Employee assistance programs ( EAP s) are employee services that assist in managing a range of issues. This paper posits that in order to ascertain the effectiveness of EAP s, it is critical to identify their purpose and how EAP s are embedded and utilised in organisations to inform evaluations of the programs. A qualitative study investigating how and why EAP s are used in organisations was undertaken. Participants were organisational leaders (3 males, 13 females) representing major industries in Australia. Semi‐structured interviews were used to collect data and thematic analysis delineated two categories and eight themes. These highlighted that participants primarily used external program providers and considered EAP s to be a vital resource of support for staff, a cost‐effective mechanism for managing risk and developing staff, and industry expectation. Participants differed on their perspectives of how to position EAP s in organisations and what should be offered as core services of EAP s.