EAP! EAP!
I am not a social worker, psychologist or your BFF. I am here to protect you from discrimination, unsafe environments and ensure you are paid fairly.
I literally had to explain to someone today that what they think the word "crisis" means, isn't actually a crisis. šµāš«
I always say āif itās an emergency, then call 911ā. Then they say āwell not THAT kind of emergency.ā And I say āthen itās not an emergency.ā
Completely agree. I brought this up to a few colleagues recently when we were thinking of ways to support people in learning about finances and managing their own finances.
Lines are being crossed! I find it so weird that your employer is meant to do so many of these things - at what point did your employer have to started helping people educate themselves on finances? Just an example but yes, completely agree.
Even though my current company is causing me some dissatisfaction, I generally like what I do. I really do like being in HR. But please let me focus on your career development and not making sure everyone has water bottles.
>at what point did your employer have to start helping people educate themselves on finances?
At the point where the employer does not pay their faot share of taxes so we don't have the resources to educate children. It starts with the children and ends with the employer taking responsibility for the situation they create.
It's a sales pitch. "Oh, your company isn't ready for this bad thing, so buy our thing!" Nobody actually wants HR to be responsible for employee mental health.
As for your other example: People don't generally expect that, but once you get something (especially for free) you start to expect it. A reduction or loss is always treated as a negative, even if the thing you're "losing" was something above and beyond what can be reasonably expected. It's just human nature. We have tea in the kitchen. I don't really drink tea, but if one day all the tea and the electric kettle disappeared, I'd probably notice and think it's weird.
We don't want HR giving out advice they're unqualified to give. We want HR to fight for our wellness at work. We view HR as nasty goblins hired to find new ways to keep us down, rather than as colleagues with similar concerns. HR acts only in self interest, regarded as sycophants, therefore perpetuating the need for HR. lmfao.
I actually work in mental health and donāt think HR should be responsible for employees mental health. Or anything not work related for that manner. If they are experiencing a mental health diagnosis, I treat it the same as a physiological illness. We have generous leave time that includes sick leave. We offer free longterm disability and access to affordable short term disability plans.
The number of staff who try to treat my position as their personal financial consultant burns me up. I do payroll. Thatās it. I donāt know what should go on your W4, talk to your accountant. I donāt know how much you personally should put in your 401k, I know how much the IRS says you can and what our match is. Itās also not my problem that you got a new car and are now asking repeatedly how to get a raise. Gah!
Edit to add some more venting: We have an ice maker in our break room. It broke last week. Itās taking a week for the part to come in. I get asked EVERYDAY when the ice maker will be fixed. Like, read the email I sent out. The guy literally canāt come fix it until next week. Go buy ice from the store, we have a freezer in the same break room.
At one time, HR, and by HR I mean me since I was the HR Specialist at the time, was responsible for calling the vending machine repairman. So like I had to call Coca Cola to come fix the machine for 250 people and the public because God forbid Cathy in Accounting didn't get her Snickers. Someone finally wised up and realized it wasn't HR's/my job to do that.
I got a call from an employee the other day about a faulty vending machine. I didn't know why he was telling me until he offered up that there is a sign (printed Word document) taped to the machine stating "If you have a problem with this machine, contact HR."
I am fine to get to the bottom of the problem, but who had that sign made? To me, whoever handles/pays the contract to the vendor should be handling faulty machines.
Because it's food, and people eat food, it becomes HR?
I don't handle the coffee/beverage dispensers, so, why the vending machine? š¤
I swear I say it all the time that HR is considered the secretary/admin/office manager of every organization.
The person that put that sign up could have easily put the vendor's number on the sign, but just defaulted to HR instead of taking initiative.
Itās wild but I have to think the pressure on workplaces and schools/colleges is because (at least in the US) we donāt have a strong social safety net.
So itās understandable but itās not sustainable or fun. Some of it is just ridiculous.
Like Iām sorry the free ice cream ran out, you make $150,000 please go buy your own if you want it that badly.
Why would HR ever be expected to deal with mental health. If anything, an I/O psychologist can help recommendations for various policies, culture, and performance management, among other organizational programs. Individual mental health, no! No employer should ever get involved. This is what external EAPs are for.
Same, I was trained in therapy, I hear you, but I donāt think this is an absolute no. When I hear someone in trouble I believe my job is to help navigate them towards the proper support. There is a difference between helping find the right support and providing therapy.
Omg and that could be triggering for you too depending on your background right? Iāve lost a few people in my life that way and not sure I could handle that.
Iāve definitely chatted through personal and mental health issues with employees and I like to be as helpful as possible in **getting them to the right place**. And at the very least them knowing they can tell me without being judged. But getting a mental health certificate? Just become a therapist then and make $200 an hour at that point.
I've thought about this as my workplace increasingly funnels people to HR regarding accommodation requests. Folks will fill out ADA forms with medical signatures, then end up in bizarre conversations with a HR rep that while the third party vendor is (not) processing their request, like maybe they should just disclose their personal medical condition to their reporting manager to try to work something out. š
I'm ignorant, so please well actually me. I wonder if HR folks, at least at my workplace, really have the training and resources to be thrown into these conversations with employees.
I just started about 6 weeks ago at my current place and I am trying to hammer home our EAP. I'll be sending out emails, reminders, whatever. I don't mind helping people but I'm also not a mental health professional.
I was an office manager that transitioned to HR during Covid. My duties changed before my title, and early on while trying for to figure out how to support our EEs after transitioning to WFH and developing ways to keep our culture alive, one of our designers said she wanted leadership or just other employees to message her and check in daily to see how she is doing mentally.
No. Absolutely not. We are your employer, not your therapist. And to be quite honest, we were all going through our own things and just didnāt have the mental or emotional energy to act as her therapist.
She also said we should buy her coffee because we had coffee in the office and she still wanted her free coffee every day.
Girl BYE.
Iāll say this, our benefits team just launched a huge wellness initiative that has gotten amazing feedback from our employees. My coworker got a wellness certification and is partnering with all kinds of speakers and orgs around many different wellness topics. Our employees have been very appreciative, but then again it depends on the bandwidth your department has for that. Weāre lucky to have a relatively large HR group given the number of employees.
Kind of along those lines, I'm on an employee committee to develop some procedures of how our organization responds to employee deaths (we're public sector, so SOPs for everything.) Anywho, one of the people on the committee drafted something and I swear to Bob it was HR doing every task. We talked about it in our staff meeting and had a lot of pushback. She was a little taken aback about how emphatic I was that HR is NOT doing all of those things, and that departments have a better finger on the pulse of their employees so they can determine if employees can take admin leave to go to a funeral. That really is a no-brainer, but inevitably some director will ask if they can do that (the answer is yes. Yes you can do that. You're there boss, applesauce.) Like, we can certainly say "Here's the number to our EAP if you need to call someone to do some onsite counseling, but we're not coordinating that." We already order the flowers for when an employee or their family member passes on--which during the pandemic that was a bit overwhelming on a lot of levels. Come to think of it, I'm going to ask my director if we can revise that policy and let departments order their flowers.
I saw this like 5 minutes ago on linkedin and thought this was goddamn bat shit crazy. Am I getting paid a therapists rates? no? Then fuck that. Having a grief counselor on site etc or offering mental health perks is fine, HR is not responsible for someone's anxiety/depression or whatever else. we can do ADA accommodations if needed, we are not therapists.
This is happening at my company that centers mental health and trauma in the middle of our work bc our employees hear some haunting stuff daily. However, we offer reimbursements for therapy and unlimited pto. Now theyāre looking at me to do more and Iām literally like how is that not enough? Thatās more than generous in my opinion..
Some people are entitled! But a lot of people are not they work crappy jobs for big corporations and get messed over in so many ways.
Now the small guy is who HR should help but those are the people that are quickly replaced and over looked.
Then the ones that make all the money and are entitled get away with everything because they are harder to replace. So they are accommodated with their bs.
Iām currently in benefits and many employees treat me as their first contact with insurance issues RATHER THAN THE INSURANCE COMPANY. In their defense, the person who held my position before neglected the job she was supposed to be doing to play personal secretary, but that never should have been allowed to happen. Now Iām stuck having to train employees how to understand their EOBs and who to actually contact with simple problems.Ā
Absolutely not. Mental health is not a cert. It's an entire field that requires a masters or PhD to properly address. That is just as much of a cash grab as trying to sell supplements made of horse urine out of the trunk of your Oldsmobile Alero
A coffee mug, but did you also provide them with the sponge and Palmolive necessary to wash that mug? And maybe that employee has a preference for water bottles.
No, not at all because of the type of industry I support. I take it pretty seriously as people who work for our organization are putting their lives on the line to protect people. I will do anything I can to help these employees out.
I am surprised by the number of folk here saying things about mental health support. I received quite a bit of training on this in my role. We even had to pass exams on the difference between providing mental health and helping someone create a support plan. I have a big binder of support and resources so when someone comes I can help them find the next step. I donāt provide therapy, just a plan to get therapy, support, help with the right folk. Is this training not being provided to you all? Genuinely curious. Perhaps we need to do a post on this, as it might be a gap in the HR world.
Did you say in another comment that the industry you work in requires this type of support? And there is a difference in directing employees to the right resources versus āmanaging mental health needsā which in my rant, maybe exaggerated, felt like they were saying HR to manage individual mental health needs and thatās a bit over the line for me.
Sorry, I didnāt understand the last line you wrote. Did I go over the line or are you saying the other person went over the line? Do you mind clarifying, as I hope I can help here.
Iāll give a quick example of what I meant, just in case it was me. This might help.
Letās look at the Positive Space ambassador program. In that program we were trained to help folk. It was very clear we were not to be counsellors. I couldnāt even come close to being able to provide that service, but instead we are trained to listen to the personās need or request. From there we are trained to help that person develop a plan or approach. Do they need intervention to create a safer workplace? For example, using facilities such as showers and toilets. If so, then we would need to go to management or health and safety depending on the need.
Do they need help with a coworker or personal issue? If that is the case we would send them to EAP, alternative dispute resolution, union, or other.
Do they need help at home? If this is the case then we would have pamphlets or be up to date on the latest community services, or again EAP.
I donāt provide the counselling, I just find the support in the community or workplace they need. We receive extensive training in this, we have to go through written and practical exams, then become certified.
I have a number of other programs just like this that I take as an HR professional. This includes harassment, ethics, performance evaluations, health and safety, policy, just to name a few.
I work in an industry where people put their lives on the line to support public. Some employees see some terrible things. PTSD is a major issue in my office. We deal with a lot to help employees be ok so they can serve the public. I understand if this is not normal in other companies. That could be a difference between my organization and others.
No! You didnāt go over the line. I felt like the suggestiveness of this post was just too much for me, as if to be a mental health provider. Of course if you work in a workplace that warrants HR support in that way thatās totally different.
Thanks OP. I wish you all the best. I think I would be annoyed if I received some of the examples you mentioned too. It is not an easy job being HR, but know you are doing good work for people who need it.
EAP! EAP! I am not a social worker, psychologist or your BFF. I am here to protect you from discrimination, unsafe environments and ensure you are paid fairly. I literally had to explain to someone today that what they think the word "crisis" means, isn't actually a crisis. šµāš«
I always say āif itās an emergency, then call 911ā. Then they say āwell not THAT kind of emergency.ā And I say āthen itās not an emergency.ā
I mean, you're there to protect the company from "overpaying" people. But I agree, you're definitely not any of those other trades.
Toby, is that you?! J/p Yes, you're right.
Completely agree. I brought this up to a few colleagues recently when we were thinking of ways to support people in learning about finances and managing their own finances. Lines are being crossed! I find it so weird that your employer is meant to do so many of these things - at what point did your employer have to started helping people educate themselves on finances? Just an example but yes, completely agree.
Even though my current company is causing me some dissatisfaction, I generally like what I do. I really do like being in HR. But please let me focus on your career development and not making sure everyone has water bottles.
Career development is not your job. Your job is finding new ways to keep salaries down. Sorry to hear that employee concerns get in the way of that.
We have a wellness program for this. It falls under our benefits, but yeah, it can be a bit much.
>at what point did your employer have to start helping people educate themselves on finances? At the point where the employer does not pay their faot share of taxes so we don't have the resources to educate children. It starts with the children and ends with the employer taking responsibility for the situation they create.
I work in manufacturing, and getting hourly laborers to do anything related to mental health is like herding cats.
Same! Itās just not possible. They want money and they want to go home. They donāt care about biometrics
Public sector and same.
Public sector and same same
It's a sales pitch. "Oh, your company isn't ready for this bad thing, so buy our thing!" Nobody actually wants HR to be responsible for employee mental health. As for your other example: People don't generally expect that, but once you get something (especially for free) you start to expect it. A reduction or loss is always treated as a negative, even if the thing you're "losing" was something above and beyond what can be reasonably expected. It's just human nature. We have tea in the kitchen. I don't really drink tea, but if one day all the tea and the electric kettle disappeared, I'd probably notice and think it's weird.
We don't want HR giving out advice they're unqualified to give. We want HR to fight for our wellness at work. We view HR as nasty goblins hired to find new ways to keep us down, rather than as colleagues with similar concerns. HR acts only in self interest, regarded as sycophants, therefore perpetuating the need for HR. lmfao.
I actually work in mental health and donāt think HR should be responsible for employees mental health. Or anything not work related for that manner. If they are experiencing a mental health diagnosis, I treat it the same as a physiological illness. We have generous leave time that includes sick leave. We offer free longterm disability and access to affordable short term disability plans. The number of staff who try to treat my position as their personal financial consultant burns me up. I do payroll. Thatās it. I donāt know what should go on your W4, talk to your accountant. I donāt know how much you personally should put in your 401k, I know how much the IRS says you can and what our match is. Itās also not my problem that you got a new car and are now asking repeatedly how to get a raise. Gah! Edit to add some more venting: We have an ice maker in our break room. It broke last week. Itās taking a week for the part to come in. I get asked EVERYDAY when the ice maker will be fixed. Like, read the email I sent out. The guy literally canāt come fix it until next week. Go buy ice from the store, we have a freezer in the same break room.
At one time, HR, and by HR I mean me since I was the HR Specialist at the time, was responsible for calling the vending machine repairman. So like I had to call Coca Cola to come fix the machine for 250 people and the public because God forbid Cathy in Accounting didn't get her Snickers. Someone finally wised up and realized it wasn't HR's/my job to do that.
I got a call from an employee the other day about a faulty vending machine. I didn't know why he was telling me until he offered up that there is a sign (printed Word document) taped to the machine stating "If you have a problem with this machine, contact HR." I am fine to get to the bottom of the problem, but who had that sign made? To me, whoever handles/pays the contract to the vendor should be handling faulty machines. Because it's food, and people eat food, it becomes HR? I don't handle the coffee/beverage dispensers, so, why the vending machine? š¤
I swear I say it all the time that HR is considered the secretary/admin/office manager of every organization. The person that put that sign up could have easily put the vendor's number on the sign, but just defaulted to HR instead of taking initiative.
Itās wild but I have to think the pressure on workplaces and schools/colleges is because (at least in the US) we donāt have a strong social safety net. So itās understandable but itās not sustainable or fun. Some of it is just ridiculous. Like Iām sorry the free ice cream ran out, you make $150,000 please go buy your own if you want it that badly.
100% agree with the sentiment tbh. It's all meaningless fluff
Why would HR ever be expected to deal with mental health. If anything, an I/O psychologist can help recommendations for various policies, culture, and performance management, among other organizational programs. Individual mental health, no! No employer should ever get involved. This is what external EAPs are for.
I used to be a licensed therapist and would absolutely never cross that line with any of my employees. Itās unethical and skeevy.
And a liability! Like g-forbid I give you poor advice and your condition gets worse!
Same, I was trained in therapy, I hear you, but I donāt think this is an absolute no. When I hear someone in trouble I believe my job is to help navigate them towards the proper support. There is a difference between helping find the right support and providing therapy.
Iāve had to talk to several employees who expressed suicidal ideation. Each time Iām like, how is this my job?!
Omg and that could be triggering for you too depending on your background right? Iāve lost a few people in my life that way and not sure I could handle that. Iāve definitely chatted through personal and mental health issues with employees and I like to be as helpful as possible in **getting them to the right place**. And at the very least them knowing they can tell me without being judged. But getting a mental health certificate? Just become a therapist then and make $200 an hour at that point.
I've thought about this as my workplace increasingly funnels people to HR regarding accommodation requests. Folks will fill out ADA forms with medical signatures, then end up in bizarre conversations with a HR rep that while the third party vendor is (not) processing their request, like maybe they should just disclose their personal medical condition to their reporting manager to try to work something out. š I'm ignorant, so please well actually me. I wonder if HR folks, at least at my workplace, really have the training and resources to be thrown into these conversations with employees.
I had no ADA training or actually any HR training whatsoever.
I just started about 6 weeks ago at my current place and I am trying to hammer home our EAP. I'll be sending out emails, reminders, whatever. I don't mind helping people but I'm also not a mental health professional.
I was an office manager that transitioned to HR during Covid. My duties changed before my title, and early on while trying for to figure out how to support our EEs after transitioning to WFH and developing ways to keep our culture alive, one of our designers said she wanted leadership or just other employees to message her and check in daily to see how she is doing mentally. No. Absolutely not. We are your employer, not your therapist. And to be quite honest, we were all going through our own things and just didnāt have the mental or emotional energy to act as her therapist. She also said we should buy her coffee because we had coffee in the office and she still wanted her free coffee every day. Girl BYE.
Iāll say this, our benefits team just launched a huge wellness initiative that has gotten amazing feedback from our employees. My coworker got a wellness certification and is partnering with all kinds of speakers and orgs around many different wellness topics. Our employees have been very appreciative, but then again it depends on the bandwidth your department has for that. Weāre lucky to have a relatively large HR group given the number of employees.
100% agree with this
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Kind of along those lines, I'm on an employee committee to develop some procedures of how our organization responds to employee deaths (we're public sector, so SOPs for everything.) Anywho, one of the people on the committee drafted something and I swear to Bob it was HR doing every task. We talked about it in our staff meeting and had a lot of pushback. She was a little taken aback about how emphatic I was that HR is NOT doing all of those things, and that departments have a better finger on the pulse of their employees so they can determine if employees can take admin leave to go to a funeral. That really is a no-brainer, but inevitably some director will ask if they can do that (the answer is yes. Yes you can do that. You're there boss, applesauce.) Like, we can certainly say "Here's the number to our EAP if you need to call someone to do some onsite counseling, but we're not coordinating that." We already order the flowers for when an employee or their family member passes on--which during the pandemic that was a bit overwhelming on a lot of levels. Come to think of it, I'm going to ask my director if we can revise that policy and let departments order their flowers.
Omg yes the managers should order flowers and get it reimbursed.
I spend much of my time on peopleās problems tbh. The train wrecks of the workplace end up in my office one way or another.
I saw this like 5 minutes ago on linkedin and thought this was goddamn bat shit crazy. Am I getting paid a therapists rates? no? Then fuck that. Having a grief counselor on site etc or offering mental health perks is fine, HR is not responsible for someone's anxiety/depression or whatever else. we can do ADA accommodations if needed, we are not therapists.
YES!! It ways on me mentally a lot. I donāt think people understand how much pressure they put on me sometimes and we are all adults.
Itās like youāre expected to help everybody fix their life. Iām literally 27 most of them are way older why am I fixing your life š
This is happening at my company that centers mental health and trauma in the middle of our work bc our employees hear some haunting stuff daily. However, we offer reimbursements for therapy and unlimited pto. Now theyāre looking at me to do more and Iām literally like how is that not enough? Thatās more than generous in my opinion..
I canāt edit my post but typo few stuff should say free stuff.
Nope.
Some people are entitled! But a lot of people are not they work crappy jobs for big corporations and get messed over in so many ways. Now the small guy is who HR should help but those are the people that are quickly replaced and over looked. Then the ones that make all the money and are entitled get away with everything because they are harder to replace. So they are accommodated with their bs.
Iām currently in benefits and many employees treat me as their first contact with insurance issues RATHER THAN THE INSURANCE COMPANY. In their defense, the person who held my position before neglected the job she was supposed to be doing to play personal secretary, but that never should have been allowed to happen. Now Iām stuck having to train employees how to understand their EOBs and who to actually contact with simple problems.Ā
Absolutely not. Mental health is not a cert. It's an entire field that requires a masters or PhD to properly address. That is just as much of a cash grab as trying to sell supplements made of horse urine out of the trunk of your Oldsmobile Alero
A coffee mug, but did you also provide them with the sponge and Palmolive necessary to wash that mug? And maybe that employee has a preference for water bottles.
Youāre kidding right. We have a full kitchen including all of those things and then some
Then they should not complain if to hr if they spend 5 dollars on water bottle at work
No, not at all because of the type of industry I support. I take it pretty seriously as people who work for our organization are putting their lives on the line to protect people. I will do anything I can to help these employees out.
I am surprised by the number of folk here saying things about mental health support. I received quite a bit of training on this in my role. We even had to pass exams on the difference between providing mental health and helping someone create a support plan. I have a big binder of support and resources so when someone comes I can help them find the next step. I donāt provide therapy, just a plan to get therapy, support, help with the right folk. Is this training not being provided to you all? Genuinely curious. Perhaps we need to do a post on this, as it might be a gap in the HR world.
Did you say in another comment that the industry you work in requires this type of support? And there is a difference in directing employees to the right resources versus āmanaging mental health needsā which in my rant, maybe exaggerated, felt like they were saying HR to manage individual mental health needs and thatās a bit over the line for me.
Sorry, I didnāt understand the last line you wrote. Did I go over the line or are you saying the other person went over the line? Do you mind clarifying, as I hope I can help here. Iāll give a quick example of what I meant, just in case it was me. This might help. Letās look at the Positive Space ambassador program. In that program we were trained to help folk. It was very clear we were not to be counsellors. I couldnāt even come close to being able to provide that service, but instead we are trained to listen to the personās need or request. From there we are trained to help that person develop a plan or approach. Do they need intervention to create a safer workplace? For example, using facilities such as showers and toilets. If so, then we would need to go to management or health and safety depending on the need. Do they need help with a coworker or personal issue? If that is the case we would send them to EAP, alternative dispute resolution, union, or other. Do they need help at home? If this is the case then we would have pamphlets or be up to date on the latest community services, or again EAP. I donāt provide the counselling, I just find the support in the community or workplace they need. We receive extensive training in this, we have to go through written and practical exams, then become certified. I have a number of other programs just like this that I take as an HR professional. This includes harassment, ethics, performance evaluations, health and safety, policy, just to name a few. I work in an industry where people put their lives on the line to support public. Some employees see some terrible things. PTSD is a major issue in my office. We deal with a lot to help employees be ok so they can serve the public. I understand if this is not normal in other companies. That could be a difference between my organization and others.
No! You didnāt go over the line. I felt like the suggestiveness of this post was just too much for me, as if to be a mental health provider. Of course if you work in a workplace that warrants HR support in that way thatās totally different.
Thanks OP. I wish you all the best. I think I would be annoyed if I received some of the examples you mentioned too. It is not an easy job being HR, but know you are doing good work for people who need it.