Highlights of the Workplace Outcome Suite© (WOS) 2024 Global Report for EAP Counseling
Description
The Workplace Outcome Suite© (WOS) was developed in 2010 for use by employee assistance programs to assess the impact of counseling services. It is a measure of change that requires collecting self-report data at before and after program use. The WOS measures work absenteeism, work presenteeism, workplace distress, work engagement, and also general life satisfaction. The five outcomes can also be combined into a single scale and two of the measures can be combined to estimate the employee’s specific number of hours of lost productive time. This report is the sixth in a series of EAP industry global benchmarks on the WOS. It is the largest and most comprehensive applied study ever done to profile EAP use and to test the longitudinal work outcomes of counseling. The report features data contributed by 61 different EAP vendors and internal staff programs operating in 15 countries. The study begins with a profile of 141,297 users of counseling services across a wide range of contexts from 2010 to 2022. Results based on over 106,000 cases revealed that over three-fourths of all cases (78%) started counseling at-risk (problem level) on one or more of the four work outcome measures. Thus, work-related outcomes were below normal for a large majority of the employees who used EAP counseling. The sample size with WOS data at both before and after EAP use ranged from 62,804 to 67,762 cases depending on the measure. Each outcome had statistically significant change results with the work presenteeism and life satisfaction outcomes improving the most. The extent of improvement on each measure was mostly consistent across all but 2 of the 18 context factors tested. Statistical tests found strong support for the psychometric validity and reliability of the WOS measures. A financial return on investment was estimated using this derived outcome using typical use, outcomes and cost conditions for an employer in the United States with 1,000 employers. The result was an ROI of $5.11:1.Citation
Attridge, M. (2024, August 21). Highlights of the Workplace Outcome Suite© (WOS) 2024 Global Report for EAP Counseling. [Virtual presentation]. Upper Midwest Chapter of the Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA). Minneapolis, MN, USA. Includes 90-minute video recording.Keyword
EAPworkplace outcome suite
Presenteeism
Counseling
Absenteeism
Self Report
Research Design
Employee assistance programs
Employee Assistance Professionals Association (U.S.)