By Patrick Gaul
A report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in March, 2010 breaks down the total cost to compensate employees. Of the $27.42 per hour average spent on the average American Worker, $8.00 per hour was spent on benefits. Health, life and disability insurance total $2.54 per hour while the rest of the benefits expense comes in the form of paid leave, supplemental pay, retirement / savings, and legally required benefits (social security, workers compensation and unemployment).
During this difficult economic time, many organizations are freezing salaries but cannot freeze the cost of benefits unless they do so by increasing cost sharing with employees. Health insurance is still considered a must have for most American workers, so employers are looking for other benefit-related spending they can cut in order to compensate for the increasing cost of basic benefits. Many potential Employee Assistance Program (EAP) customers have given this as the reason for there being no room in the budget for an EAP.
This study has me thinking: How much is the average employer really saving by cutting the EAP from the benefits budget?
This model provides an interesting perspective. A few quick calculations reveal the answer:
The average Ease@Work customer pays between 1.7 and 2.4 cents per hour for our program. The Human Resource (HR) and/or benefits people typically want a program like ours because it is a program that helps in so many ways. For employees it provides counseling, assistance with childcare, eldercare, legal and financial issues, and also a wellness benefit, providing a wide variety of information in many forms including in-person consultations with nutrition and wellness coaches. An EAP even makes life easier on management by providing 24/7 access to behavior specialists for help with challenging employee situations.
I have to wonder if the EAP advocates in HR would be more likely to get budgetary approval from decision-makers if they proposed the EAP as a 2.5 cent per hour “employee” whose job description is to support and service all of their other employees in so many essential ways. Sounds rather inexpensive to me when you think of it that way…
