Health Assured
EAP
See a comprehensive overview of the pros and cons of the Health Assured EAP, now branded HA | Wisdom Wellbeing.
Health Assured EAP overview
Health Assured is the UK's biggest EAP by volume, claiming to support 12.5 million lives across 88,000 organisations. It is owned by Peninsula Group, runs its helpline from Manchester, and rebranded to HA | Wisdom Wellbeing in 2025 as it expanded into Australia and New Zealand.
The core product is a 24/7 telephone helpline answered by in-house counsellors, with structured counselling on top and the Wisdom app (launched 2023) as the digital layer, including live chat, video calls and SilverCloud online CBT.
It is everywhere in the UK market: bundled with Peninsula and BrightHR contracts and white-labelled through partners like Reward Gateway and Towergate, which is why many companies have Health Assured without ever having chosen it.
At a glance
Trustpilot rating:
4.8
/ 5
EAP type:
Traditional EAP
Number of clients:
88,000 organisations
HQ:
UK
Services:
On-demand counselling
Next day sessions
Neurodivergence support
Integrations
Plan options:
Trial available
Flexible pricing options
No exit fees
Counselling on Health Assured
Employees call the 24/7 helpline and go through triage and clinical assessment on first contact. Depending on the employer's package, the pathway leads to structured telephone counselling or 6 to 12 sessions delivered face to face, online or by phone through an affiliate network of around 2,000 counsellors. The service holds BACP and NCPS accreditation.
The model is built for volume, and that is where the controversy sits. A 2023 BBC File on 4 investigation, based on 15 current and former employees, alleged internal targets to keep calls under 19 minutes and to refer only 18 percent of callers on to therapy. Health Assured called the claims categorically untrue, but the EAP industry body EAPA UK later found the company had not met expected ethical standards.
Day-to-day reviews are far kinder than the headlines: recent Trustpilot feedback frequently praises fast callbacks, quick matching and the quality of individual counsellors, including neurodiversity-experienced therapists.
Other services on Health Assured
Integrations
There are no workplace tool integrations. Access is via phone, the Wisdom app or the online portal, and much of its distribution is white-labelled inside other HR products (Peninsula, BrightHR, Reward Gateway).
Confidentiality
Health Assured publishes a confidentiality statement aligned to the BACP code of ethics. That stance was directly challenged by the 2023 BBC report, which alleged corporate clients could listen in to live calls without caller consent. The company denied this.
Extras
The wider package includes a legal information line, debt and financial guidance with up to 3 financial coaching sessions, manager consultancy, critical incident support, whistleblowing lines, mental health first aid training and wellbeing webinars.
Health Assured EAP reviews
See what others say about
Health Assured
Best reviews for Health Assured
Fast, easy access
Reviewers repeatedly describe quick responses to the first call or message, with assessments set up smoothly and counsellor matches made within days.
Quality of individual counsellors
Users name specific counsellors as empathetic, professional and effective, with some reporting measurable improvements in anxiety and mood after their sessions.
Bad reviews for Health Assured
Missed and rigid callbacks
One-star reviews describe promised triage callbacks arriving many hours late or in the middle of the night, numbers that cannot be called back, and inflexible contact protocols.
Poor complaint handling
Employers and employees report disputes handled defensively and complaints processes that do not resolve issues, echoing the longstanding criticisms of the high-volume call centre model.
In Summary
Health Assured is the volume option: the biggest helpline operation in the UK, priced from around £1.08 per employee per month on its own site, and as low as £1 to £10 per employee per year through partner channels depending on the session package (Reward Gateway price list, April 2026). For basic duty-of-care cover at rock-bottom cost, nothing undercuts it.
The trade-off is the model itself. Counselling is rationed through triage, the BBC investigation and the EAPA UK ethics finding raised serious questions about referral targets, and the strong 4.8 Trustpilot score sits awkwardly beside them. Reviews praise individual counsellors while criticising the machine around them.
For employers whose priority is a low-cost compliance layer, it does the job. For employers who want staff to actually use therapy, the sub-19-minute call culture is the thing to interrogate in the sales process.
How Health Assured compares to Spill
Health Assured rations therapy through triage: a call centre assessment decides whether you get one of 6 to 12 capped sessions. Spill flips the model: every employee gets unlimited therapy sessions, booked in one click from Slack, MS Teams or their phone, usually happening the same day. No triage call, no referral target deciding whether you deserve help.
The commercial difference is just as sharp. Health Assured locks you into annual contracts at a price that looks tiny until you check how few people ever get past the helpline. Spill starts at £75 a month on a rolling 30 day contract you can leave any month, and typical usage runs several times higher, so the cost per person actually helped is usually lower.
Choose Health Assured if a rock-bottom per-head price for a compliance-level helpline is genuinely all you need. Choose Spill if you want every employee to have unlimited same-day therapy, one click away, on a contract that has to earn its renewal every month.
See the difference for yourself: book a free 30 minute demo and we'll show you how Spill would work for your team.