Employers spruik workplace wellbeing services. But who is picking up the phone?

Employees should be wary of who is on the other end of the line when they call a workplace mental health service, psychologist groups say, amid concerns that skill shortages and low pay rates have impacted the number of qualified clinicians working in the sector.

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and other workplace wellbeing services are reporting an increase in usage, as the stigma attached to seeking help decreases and employers promote the services in response to crises and cultural issues.

Psychologists say workplace health services are not paying enough to attract qualified clinicians. Credit: Shutterstock

But Australian Psychological Society chief executive Dr Zena Burgess said staffing shortfalls across all parts of the mental health workforce have impacted who these programs can hire and their ability to refer patients to more appropriate care when a case is beyond their skill level.

“In the past, EAPs were staffed by psychologists, but now you can get a real mixture,” she said, noting that while the programs were effective in some situations, sessions with a life coach or other non-clinical support person through an EAP were inferior to in-house psychology services.

Australian Association of Psychologists director Dr Katrina Norris said EAPs and similar services were not paying enough to attract qualified mental health clinicians in the current job market.

“Working for an EAP is not necessarily valued work for registered psychologists. You start to drive out the qualified professionals because they will not work for $90 an hour,” she said.

“To be delivering acute and in-the-moment services, that does require [EAPs] to be employing social workers, psychologists ... as opposed to other professions who do not have the skills”.

The Employee Assistance Professional Association of Australasia (EAPAA), a peak body for EAP providers, says its members provide good short-term care for employees whose needs could be addressed by a non-clinical professional such as a life coach.

EAPAA secretary Melita Griffin stressed EAPs were not designed to provide care for acute mental health crises.

“We provide a short-term solution; we are the stop-gap for those workforce shortages,” she said, noting that EAPs provided timely mental health support to people who may have otherwise been on a months-long waiting list.

“There’s a perception that a psychologist is the only person who can meet someone’s needs, but that is not true.”

According to a 2023 workforce survey conducted by the peak body, 91 per cent of staff at EAPAA-affiliated member services, such as Converge International and AccessEAP, were licensed in a clinical field, such as psychology, social work, or healthcare. The peak body also has a set of operating standards for its members.

However, EAPAA membership is not mandatory for companies providing these types of services.

For example, Sonder, a workplace support app that has replaced EAP services at several large employers, including Woolworths and McDonald’s, is not a member of the organisation.

A Sonder spokesperson said at least 90 per cent of its staff had “clinical qualifications”, noting it employed various professionals “in recognition that personal needs are broad and do not just fit into one box”.

A 2020 mental health report by the Productivity Commission flagged a lack of licensing and regulatory requirements for EAPs, raising concerns about the lack of data on quality and outcomes in the sector.

Mental health support at work is increasingly important for employers, with workplaces facing a positive duty on employers to take a proactive approach to prevent sex discrimination and harassment as part of the federal government’s Respect at Work reforms.

Rethink required

Professor Maureen Dollard, a researcher at the University of South Australia, said the new legislation should prompt a rethink of how workplaces provide mental health support.

“Under the new regulations, it is imperative for organisations to eliminate psychosocial risks; it’s not enough to just provide an EAP service,” she said, adding that there was a missed opportunity to feed information about company culture back to organisations.

“If you are depressed because your workplace is really stressful, you can go to an EAP and give them information about the stressful nature of your job, but it’s not in their interest to report that back to your workplace because their business model is based on people having mental health problems,” she said.

In 2022, Dollard co-authored a small-scale evaluation of workers’ experiences of EAPs, finding the programs did decrease psychological distress. However, the research found long-term success was heavily dependent on company culture.

“Even if your levels of psychological distress are decreased, it is not helpful if you’re going back to a stressful work context,” she said.

Griffin denied that EAPs did not have an interest in fixing wellbeing issues.

She said EAPs did report high-level data on employee wellbeing, such as common themes, back to workplaces, but they were limited in how much information they could provide.

“We take confidentiality very seriously, so we need to be careful with that,” she said.

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