EAP Industry Outcomes for Employee Absenteeism and Presenteeism: A Global Research Analysis

Abstract

This study standardized the results from a variety of different client- and clinician-rated measures of work absence and work productivity that were collected at pre and post use of the EAP. This super dataset represents the experiences of over 240,000 individual employees users of EAP counseling over 20 years of service delivery from 20 different EAPs in six countries (Australia, Canada, China, Netherlands, South Africa and the United States).

The change in absenteeism showed a reduction in work absence from an average of 13.04 hours per case per month before EAP to 6.44 hours during the most recent month at follow-up after use of EAP counseling.

For presenteeism, the average employee user of the EAP was functioning at a 64% level of productivity during the month before use of the EAP (on a 0-100% scale; with the typical “healthy” employee at 84%). But this initial rather severe deficit changed to a more normal level of 79% when assessed several months later at follow-up after completing EAP counseling. When using a standard full-time work schedule of 160 hours a month and adjusting the total time at work for absence hours when not at work at Pre and Post periods, this level of unproductivity is equivalent to a total of 52.9 hours of presenteeism before use of the EAP and 32.3 hours after the use of EAP.

When absenteeism and presenteeism are combined, the month before use of EAP was 66.0 hours and the month after at follow-up was 39.7. This is a difference in which the typical EAP counseling case experienced 27.25 hours less of lost productive time (i.e., 6.6 fewer hours of missed work (absenteeism) and 20.7 fewer hours of lost productive time while at work (presenteeism) per month after use of the EAP). Note that presenteeism accounts for about 80% of the 27.2 total hours of restored work productivity after EAP counseling. Preventing 3.4 days of lost productivity per month is a substantial outcome considering that the true effect of EAP counseling is several times larger taking into account that the typical course of clinical distress if untreated could extend for a period of several months with varying levels of severity and associated work impairment.