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Are EAPs ineffective in the context of law firms?
Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, a clinical and forensic psychologist argued that concerns about confidentiality, trust in the system and inconvenience all prevent lawyers from higher uptake of employee assistance programs.
Jerome Doraisamy
Cyber Clinic founder and CEO Dr Qusai Hussain said the three-pronged perceived issues surrounding confidentiality, trust and convenience meant that the rate of use of EAPs – which he said sits around three to five per cent for working professionals and is likely to be even lower for lawyers – wouldn’t improve.
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“[Lawyers] worry that information will go back to their employers, and that [EAPs are] not set up to be as confidential as they would like. They are also concerned about their futures within their companies and how mental health might impact their work,” he posited.
“The second really important one is around trust: they don’t trust EAPs to provide them with the help they are looking for, because there’s huge variety in the types of counsellors [who] may not be suited for the needs of lawyers or who have a good understanding of the types of pressures that lawyers are under and how they operate within different frameworks.”
“The third one that often gets reported is that they don’t know about the EAP services or can’t access the information, and we often see that when people are going through a crisis or something difficult – if the EAP services aren’t good enough, they aren’t likely to go and access them. The whole process becomes too difficult. Access to and knowledge about it should be at someone’s fingertips,” he said.
What lawyers in firms need, Dr Hussain surmised, is to be able to engage with services – online, in app form, etc – through which they can promptly gain access to the specific assistance they need.
The biggest problem, he reflected, is that often lawyers “are not connected to the right type of service”.
“EAPs have a role to play in that they provide face-to-face consults, but for an individual, they have to go through a triaging process, they have to call someone and talk to them, it might not have a 24-hour booking system, and people like having control over the appointments and see the kind of person who can help them,” he said.
“Currently, EAPs don’t really have that – the way they work is that if you call their line, they will just book you in based on availability and location that is most convenient for a face-to-face consult.”
It is crucial that law firms consider the effectiveness of EAPs within the context of their own workplaces, he noted, especially given how legal professionals are more prone than most of not all other industries to psychological distress, anxiety and depression.
For those firms, if issues aren’t addressed soon enough, he warned, problems would snowball into larger ones such as absenteeism, lost productivity and low staff morale.
“It has broader implications if not addressed in the right way and can also impact the firm’s bottom line.”
