How to Make Your EAP More Valuable in Helping Overseas Workers
Daniel Feerst
CATALOG: WorkExcel.com: Tools to educate, train, and enhance workforce wellness and productivity with completely brandable resources that make an impact on the bottom line while they save lives.
New research from Florida Atlantic University shows that an employee's personality may have a lot to do with how well they perform overseas. WorkExcel.com believes this research offers strong clues as to how EAPs can expand their risk-reduction services to provide employers more value.
Looking at this research more closely, what appears obvious is how these findings are about building resilience, and acting on personal skills that demonstrate resilience in action.
Employees who travel to work overseas for any significant period of time have important stressors to consider, and some these can take a psychological toll if an employee is not well-prepared.
There is a core-technology EAP opportunity associated with this problem that can add value and capture high ground to fill a need in helping business organizations reduce risk associated with troubled workers overseas.
EAP's have the ability to play a support-giving and educational role in helping employees before and after coming back from overseas. The goal: Avoiding crises that take a toll on employee and company productivity. Consider these issues for EAP programming -- based upon research --
+ Employee's poor sense of well-being in a new environment
+ Conflicts between the employee and workplace demands back home
+ Desire to quit and return because of distress
+ Struggling to adjust to a foreign environment
+ Moving overseas with children, and associated stress
+ Cultural naivete and lack of education
+ Need for post-travel and return wellness-work-life assessment to intervene with unresolved issues
+ Helping employees examine resiliency deficits and behaviors that may prevent a successful overseas experience (i.e. ability to form social networks, etc.)
According to research, characteristics of employees that lend themselves to an improved ability to cope include: 1) Emotional stability 2) Openness 3) Extroversion 4) Conscientiousness and 5) Agreeableness.
What do these things mean? Read more here to find out, and imagine what role your EAP might play.
Daniel Feerst, BSW, MSW, LISW-CP, Publisher, WorkExcel.com 1-800-626-4327, Click here to see our 100+ page catalog.