Event: Montgomery County SHRM Monthly Meeting

HOW TO EVALUATE AN EAP

In order for an organization to gain the full potential of an employee assistance program, it must understand the multiple ways by which an EAP can support its business objectives. Properly conceived and embedded within an organization's executive processes, an EAP is far more that a form of employer-paid outpatient counseling. Rather, it is a key player that lends its subject matter expertise to a number of organizational structures, including:

- Human Resources
- Health, Safety, and Environment
- Corporate Security
- Legal
- Dispute Resolution/Mediation
- Disability Management
- Benefits
- Business Development

This presentation will describe EAP's value in relation to the objectives of these structures and explain the advantages of a fully-utilized EAP.

Jeff Christie, LCSW, CEAP is Global Manager of the Halliburton Employee Assistance Program, an internal program serving Halliburton employees and their families. He received his Master of Social Work degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981. For the past 27 years he has worked in the fields of chemical dependency treatment and employee assistance programs. Prior to Halliburton, Mr. Christie served in the employee assistance programs of Conoco, Pennzoil, and those of a large external EAP vendor.

In addition to his Halliburton responsibilities, Mr. Christie has presented over 50 workshops on the subjects of stress management, EAP ethics, and mental health care. He has published numerous articles on ethics and ethics education. He is a primary author of the book, Ethical Dilemmas in Workplace Counseling: A Casebook.

Last year, Mr. Christie served on the EAP task force of the National Business Group on Health, charged with creating and disseminating an NBGH product that will serve as an employer's guide to evaluating EAP services.

In September 2008, Mr. Christie was selected as president-elect of the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, the largest of the EAP professional associations. In October 2008, he was elected as president of the Employee Assistance Roundtable, an organization of internally managed employee assistance programs of Fortune 500 companies.

This program has been approved for 1.00 (General) recertification credit hour toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org