Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs): Confidential Support When It’s Most Needed
People don’t leave their lives at the door when they come to work. Financial pressure, relationship difficulties, health concerns, bereavement, stress: these things follow employees into the workplace.
When there’s somewhere to turn, people cope better. Without that support, the impact can show up in absence, in performance and, over time, in people deciding to leave.
How your data is kept confidential
My Group’s Employee Assistance Programme gives employees access to confidential support around the clock, covering mental health, financial and legal concerns, and practical advice on a wide range of personal and work-related issues. It also includes a wellbeing area that helps employees manage their health before difficulties become crises.
Individual use is confidential and is not shared with the employer, subject to standard safeguarding and legal exceptions. Employers receive only anonymised, aggregated usage data.
Why does an Employee Assistance Programme matter?
According to the Health and Safety Executive, stress, depression and anxiety accounted for 22.1 million working days lost in Great Britain in 2024/25. Deloitte’s most recent UK Mental Health and Employers report puts the total cost of poor mental health to UK employers at approximately £51 billion per year, through absence, presenteeism and turnover.
Those figures show the scale of the impact poor mental health has on people and organisations.
An EAP doesn’t eliminate difficulty. What it does is give employees somewhere to go when things get hard. An independent route to confidential, qualified support without needing to go through their manager or HR team. For many employees, that anonymity is what makes it possible to ask for help at all.
Personal challenges can affect working life
Stress, financial worry, relationship difficulties and health concerns can affect attendance, concentration and performance.
An EAP gives employees a confidential place to seek help before problems become harder to manage.
People need to know it’s confidential before they’ll use it
An EAP only works if employees trust it.
That means being clear, from the moment the benefit is communicated, that individual use is confidential and is not shared with the employer, subject to standard safeguarding and legal exceptions. Employers receive only anonymised, aggregated usage data.
What does the Employee Assistance Programme include?
The EAP provides a range of confidential support services, available to employees any time of day or night, 365 days a year.
24/7 confidential telephone helpline
Employees can call the confidential helpline at any time to speak with a qualified counsellor or adviser.
Whether they’re dealing with stress, anxiety, a relationship breakdown, bereavement, or something they’re not sure how to describe, there’s someone available to listen and help them work out next steps. The service is available around the clock, including evenings, weekends and bank holidays.
Debt and money guidance
Financial worry is one of the most common causes of stress. The EAP includes access to advisers who can provide practical information and guidance on debt, budgeting and available options when money worries feel out of control.
This sits alongside the broader financial wellbeing support available through My Group, and gives employees a confidential route to guidance they might not otherwise seek.
Legal information and guidance
Employees can access confidential information and guidance on a range of everyday legal concerns.
This helps them understand their position and the options available to them. This is general guidance rather than legal representation.
Downloadable self-help resources
Employees who prefer to manage things independently can access a library of self-help resources covering mental health, stress, relationships, sleep, financial wellbeing and more.
These are available on demand, without needing to speak to anyone first, which matters for employees who aren’t ready to have a conversation but still want support.
Podcasts, blogs and wellbeing content
A regularly updated library of content covering topics relevant to everyday wellbeing, from managing stress and building resilience to nutrition, sleep and financial health.
Employees can engage with this content on their own terms, using it as a way to maintain wellbeing rather than waiting until something goes wrong.
How does the wellbeing area support employee wellbeing?
Alongside the core EAP, employees also have access to a proactive wellbeing area that helps them take a more active approach to their health, both in and out of the workplace. Rather than waiting until something becomes a problem, the wellbeing area gives employees the tools to understand their own health and build better habits over time.
Personalised Wellbeing Scoring
Employees can monitor their overall wellbeing through wellbeing scoring. This takes into account how different aspects of life interact with each other to give employees an accurate picture of their overall wellness.
Employees can see how daily habits impact their health and get actionable tips to improve their fitness, nutrition, wellbeing and sleep.
Goals & activity tracking
Employees can set personal health goals and track progress, with the platform connecting to popular health apps so activity data feeds in automatically.
Small, sustainable changes are easier to maintain when there’s a clear picture of how things are going.
Personalised resources
Based on assessment results and activity data, the wellbeing area surfaces relevant resources, blogs, videos and recipes, alongside personalised recommendations. It also provides access to 24/7 support and counselling, so employees can move from self-directed wellbeing into supported care when they need to.
What does the EAP offer HR teams and managers?
An EAP isn’t only a benefit for employees. It also gives HR teams and line managers a clearer framework for supporting people through difficulty, without having to carry that weight themselves.
A structured route for managers to follow
When a manager notices that an employee is struggling, knowing what to say and what to offer is one of the hardest parts. The EAP gives managers a clear, compassionate route to suggest: confidential support that the employee controls, with no obligation on the manager to understand or resolve the underlying issue themselves. That clarity matters, particularly for managers who care but don’t have the expertise to help.
Anonymised usage reporting
HR teams receive anonymised, aggregated data on EAP usage, which helps with understanding whether the benefit is being communicated effectively and whether employees are engaging with the support available. Individual usage details are not shared with the employer. Employers receive only anonymised, aggregated reporting, subject to the safeguarding and legal exceptions explained above.
Talk to us about the Employee Assistance Programme
We can walk you through how the EAP and wellbeing area work in practice, what employees experience when they use the service, and how it sits alongside the wider My Group health and wellbeing offering.
Frequently Asked Questions
An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is a confidential support service that employers provide for their people. It gives employees access to qualified counsellors, practical guidance on money and legal concerns, and a range of self-help resources to help them manage personal or work-related difficulties. Use is confidential, and the next question explains how that works.
Yes. Individual use is confidential and is not shared with the employer, subject to standard safeguarding and legal exceptions. Employers receive only anonymised, aggregated usage data.
The EAP covers a wide range of personal and work-related issues, including stress and anxiety, depression and low mood, relationship and family difficulties, bereavement, financial worry and debt, legal concerns, and workplace conflict. Employees don’t need to have a diagnosed condition or a serious crisis to use it. The service is there for anything that’s affecting their wellbeing.
Employees can access the EAP by calling the confidential helpline, which is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They can also access self-help resources and wellbeing content through the My Group portal. Employees state the name of their employer when they call.
The EAP includes access to counselling alongside financial and legal guidance, self-help resources and wellbeing tools. For employees who need more structured or ongoing support, My Group’s Employee Counselling Services sit alongside the EAP.
It gives employees a route to support when difficulties first arise, helping them address problems earlier and potentially reducing the risk of those difficulties contributing to absence. For HR teams managing absence, the EAP also gives managers a clear, structured way to support employees who are showing early signs of difficulty.