Benchmark your workforce mental health outcomes against the latest research in 2024
Drawing from an extensive dataset of over 85,000 cases spanning 2,679 employers across various industries, CuraLinc’s latest peer-reviewed study offers employers a crucial benchmark to evaluate and elevate their workforce mental health programs.
This groundbreaking research is currently the largest study of EAP outcomes. It showcases how CuraLinc is reshaping workplace mental health and productivity, illustrating the tangible outcomes we facilitate for our clients and their employees every day.
Discover invaluable insights for your workforce mental health initiatives by completing the form to access the summary or visit the International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications to see the full report.
Employee Assistance Program Counseling Improves Clinical and Work Outcomes: CuraLinc Healthcare Results from Over 85,000 Cases
Source: International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 14, Issue 3, March 2024
ABSTRACT
This applied study explored how workers in different major industries used employee assistance program (EAP) clinical services and examined the level of effectiveness of service use on common behavioral health and work-related outcomes. We used data collected over a 7-year period from employee users of individual counseling or coaching from a single national EAP business in the United States. Data was obtained from archival records of the normal course of business at CuraLinc Healthcare. The sample included 85,432 clients who worked at 2,679 different employers. Longitudinal follow-up data at Post use was available from 9,063 cases (11% of the starting full sample).
Among those cases initially at clinical risk status on outcomes in the total sample, severity scores from Pre to Post were reduced by almost two-thirds for anxiety, depression, alcohol misuse and hours lost work productivity (change from 63.5 hours to 23.6 hours). In the total sample, a large majority of the cases who started EAP use at-risk on the specific measure later successfully recovered to no longer be at clinical risk at the 30-day follow-up: anxiety (78% of 1,105 cases recovered; hp 2 = .77), depression (87% of 1,316 cases recovered; hp 2 = .87), and hazardous alcohol use (74% of 788 cases recovered; hp 2 = .74). Among cases with a work absenteeism and/or work presenteeism problem before EAP use, 88% of 3,636 cases recovered (hp 2 = .74). These longitudinal results in the total sample were all large size statistical effects.
Users were grouped into eight types of industries according to their employer: manufacturing and related heavy labor (20% of the total cases); healthcare (18%); financial and business (14%); transportation (12%); restaurants and retail trade (12%); education (9%); government and municipality (7%); and technology (7%). The gender mix of clients ranged widely by industry (from 44% to 80% women). The rare event of being formally referred into the EAP by a manager at work also varied by industry (from <1% to 6%). In the total sample, when starting to use the EAP many cases reported having clinical-level symptoms on standardized measures for anxiety disorder (43% at-risk), depression disorder (30% at-risk), alcohol misuse disorder (12% at-risk) and low work productivity (50% at problem level). Only small or trivial size variations were found between the industry types in the service use characteristics and for almost all of the clinical risk rates. All of these clinical and work outcome improvement test results were found to be similar within each industry type (i.e., specific industry results only ranged from 5% better to 5% worse than the study average result). Comparisons with past research, study limitations and implications are discussed. This study is unique in providing empirical profiles of multiple industries using the same operational system and the same clinical and work measures collected longitudinally from large samples of EAP users working at thousands of employers nationally.