Learn why Spill is the UK's highest rated EAP
Learn more about SpillEmployee assistance programmes (EAPs) have become an increasingly popular choice for companies wanting to support their teams through personal and professional challenges that can affect their wellbeing and performance at work.
88% of all UK employers now have an employee assistance programme (EAP)
But not all employee assistance programmes are created equal. There are four main types of EAP, differentiated by how integrated they are into your business and therefore how much input is required to set up, promote and manage the service:
- External EAPs (delivered by a third party provider)
- Internal EAPs (delivered in-house by a private therapist)
- Embedded EAPs (part of a broader service e.g. health insurance or a HR tool)
- Hybrid EAPs (delivered by a third party provider, but integrated into business tools like Slack or MS Teams)
You could also classify the types of employee assistance programme (EAP) according to the features available:
- Traditional EAPs (key feature: 24/7 phone line)
- Digital wellbeing platforms (key feature: online content library)
- Modern EAPs (key feature: on-demand counselling sessions)
For an employee assistance programme to successful, it has to be the right fit for your team's specific challenges and set up. Let’s go through each of these options in turn to understand the difference between the types of EAPs available, how they work, who uses them and benefits and limitations to watch out for.
The four types of EAP programmes
When choosing an employee assistance programme for your business, it's worth doing your research into how the service works and the time/resource commitment from your side to make everything run smoothly.
1. External EAPs
What is an external employee assistance programme (EAP)?
An external EAP is a third-party organisation that delivers confidential, professional support services to employees on behalf of a company. They are independent organisations that work with multiple companies at any one time, and provide a range of services including counselling, financial advice, legal support and manager training.
Examples of external EAPs include:
Pros of an external EAP:
✅ Confidentiality is prioritised and employees can access help without involving the company directly. This is crucial for people to trust and feel safe using the service without any fear of stigma, discrimination or impact on career progression. This often leads people to seek support earlier, which prevents their problems from becoming more severe.
✅ Services are usually available 24/7 and can be accessed remotely, ensuring employees get support whenever they need it (including evenings, weekends and during the holidays).
✅ Support is often available in multiple languages and timezones, ideal for global teams who want to provide counselling for employees in their native tongue.
✅ External EAPs have a network of qualified therapists, so they can match employees with a specialist who has extensive training in a certain area e.g. bereavement or addiction.
Cons of an external EAP:
🚩 Depending on your provider and plan, the amount of counselling support available to employees is often capped at around 6 sessions per year. This can be really frustrating for people navigating longer-term or more severe challenges (like anxiety or depression) who would benefit from regular sessions on an ongoing basis. Some providers (like Spill) do offer unlimited support – so it's worth considering.
🚩 When one of your team contacts the EAP, they’ll likely be expecting support straight away. But with many external EAPs unfortunately this isn’t the case, and employee are left feeling unsupported and vulnerable while they wait several days or weeks for a callback. Look for providers who clearly state that professional support (from a qualified counsellor, not a call centre member of staff) is available instantly.
🚩 One of the big selling points of external EAPs is that they feel very separate from the company, erasing any concerns around confidentiality. The flip side of this is that they can feel very far away, and without a lot of internal promotion and reminders, engagement and usage is typically very low (averaging just 3% of employees).
🚩 Some of the larger external EAP providers only offer support to larger companies. This tends to be a company of 250 employees or more, so if you’re a smaller team you might have to rule out an external EAP altogether.
Looking for an external EAP provider?
You can access a long list of UK employee assistance programmes here, and filter by user rating or the type of services you need to find the best fit for your team.
2. Internal EAPs
What is an internal employee assistance programme (EAP)?
Internal EAPs offer certain mental health support services to an external provider, but everything is organised and managed by internal staff – usually within the HR team. This usually means hiring a private therapist to sit somewhere within the office, available for drop-in sessions during work hours. Some companies, like drinks company innocent, have gone a step further – working with a consultant to develop their own internal EAP support network delivered by team leaders and people managers across the business.
Ideal for:
Large corporates with the HR resource to manage hiring, training and supervision for an in-house therapist – and a large office space to accommodate a drop-in therapy office that's tucked away enough for employees to use discreetly. Examples of employers opting for an internal EAP include JPMorgan Chase, who have an in-house clinician available to employees during work hours to support with issues like stress, burnout or anxiety.
Pros of an internal EAP:
✅ Bringing everything in-house or signing up a single counsellor will save you some pennies and avoid signing up for a multi-year contract as required by most large EAPs services.
✅ The ability to customise an internal EAP is far greater than an external provider. Depending on the needs of your team, you can tailor support accordingly e.g. if one employee needs 20 counselling sessions, you can make this happen. Plus, an internal team knows your company culture: workplace problems will have context and understanding, helping the support feel more tailored and actionable.
✅ Employees might prefer talking to a friendly face, and feel happier seeking help from someone they already know and trust.
Cons of an internal EAP:
🚩 Having an internal EAP or private in-house counsellor could lead to a conflict of interest: their goal changes to serve the company’s interests, rather than to focus on the interests of individual employees. This can cause employees to distrust the service and feel hesistent to use it, if they feel any private information might be passed back to the company.
🚩 There's no way to guarantee confidentiality in terms of who is using the service when employees have to drop-in to a meeting room within the office (especially in smaller buildings where space is limited).
🚩 Availability of sessions is limited to work hours (and in most cases, only certain hours/days for drop-ins) which can be off-putting when employees have to head straight back to their desk after an emotional conversation, and difficult to carve out time from a busy schedule.
🚩 Employees don't have access to a large network of counsellors, they can't choose a specialist or request someone of a specific gender or ethnicity who'll best fit their needs – they'll only have access to a single therapist.
3. Embedded EAPs
What is an embedded employee assistance programme (EAP)?
Much like it sounds, embedded employee assistance programmes are provided as part of a larger health and wellbeing package, usually either company health insurance or a benefits and rewards platform. They are often referred to as an add-on service, bundled in with the main offering to add value. This tends to be a good starting point for organisations that want to offer employee support without the cost or complexity of a full standalone programme. However, may not meet the needs of companies seeking more in-depth or tailored mental health services.
Examples of embedded EAPs include:
Ideal for:
Large companies looking to provide a broader employee benefits package that extends beyond mental health to include physical health and other services such as discounts, savings and rewards. Examples of companies who use embedded EAPs include Sodexo, BookingGo and Flight Centre.
Pros of an embedded EAP:
✅ Embedded EAPs that come as part of an existing package are often touted as ‘free’, or at least much cheaper than using another external provider.
✅ Let’s face it, embedded EAPs are a convenient choice. Buying a full health service that covers physical injury or illness as well as mental health support saves you time: no need to research another provider and there will be far less paperwork.
✅ Embedded EAPs are a "full service" healthcare product, working in tandem with physical health-related benefits for holistic support.
Cons of an embedded EAP:
🚩 Watch out for hidden costs. If it's billed as ‘free’, then it's usually too good to be true. The cost of an embedded EAP is often built into the cost of your premium, so you’ll still be paying for it. Embedded EAPs are usually sold at or below cost to attract attention to a higher margin product (i.e. the insurance).
🚩 Generally, embedded EAPs offer a limited range of services. Bupa’s EAP for example excludes crisis intervention, substance abuse support, and manager training from its services, and makes no mention of offering your business with support or anonymous data to help you manage the EAP. If your employees require specialist help, they’ll need to go elsewhere at their own expense.
🚩 Bupa and AXA Health make their money via health insurance: that’s their product. Their EAP services on the other hand are an afterthought; the company wasn’t built to primarily provide an EAP. As a result, embedded EAPs don’t always have the same standards or rigour when it comes to hiring and training counsellors (it's worth checking out their Trustpilot reviews to get an insight here).
🚩 In most cases, embedded EAPs don’t come with promotional support or integrations that make them easy for employees to access. While this can drive down costs, it can also translate into low usage rates and more work for you, as you’ll be responsible for driving engagement.
Looking for an embedded EAP provider?
You can access a long list of UK employee assistance programmes here, and filter by user rating or the type of services you need to find the best fit for your team.
4. Hybrid EAPs
What is a hybrid employee assistance programme (EAP)?
A hybrid EAP is a model that combines both internal and external support services to provide a more flexible, tailored, and comprehensive approach to employee wellbeing. Hybrid EAPs achieve the perfect balance between being clearly recognised as a third party service (which is crucial for confidentiality and trust), but also being seamlessly integrated into the business and the way people work (which is important for engagement and usage).
Examples of hybrid EAPs include:
Ideal for:
Small companies and startups with limited HR resource. Having a simple and accessible support system available to signpost any employees who are struggling is invaluable, and can save HR teams and people managers a huge amount of time which they can reallocate to other critical areas like hiring or performance management. In a small company when even one employee is struggling to focus, or signed-off work, this can have a huge impact on the rest of the team – so the emphasis on accessibility (through tools like Slack and MS Teams) and quality of support is even more important. Examples of companies who use hybrid EAPs include Koru Kids, Born Social and THIS.
Pros of a hybrid EAP:
✅ The service is fully confidential and separate enough from the company to be trusted by employees (crucial for people to feel safe using the service without any fear of stigma, discrimination or impact on career progression).
✅ Services are available 24/7 and can be accessed remotely, including support on evenings, weekends and during the holidays. Some hybrid EAPs (like Spill) integrate directly with tools like Slack or Teams to enable employees to speak to a counsellor in just a few clicks (no log in details or phone numbers to remember, and no waiting for a callback).
✅ Support is available in multiple languages and timezones, ideal for global teams who want to provide counselling for employees in their native tongue.
✅ Employees can choose to speak with a specialist in a specific area (from parenthood to bereavement or neurodiversity), or request a therapist of a certain gender or ethnicity who best fits their situation.
✅ Managers can get advice and training from a mental health professional on how to support people in their team – ideal for smaller companies where HR resource is limited, and managers take on a lot of responsibility when it comes to employee wellbeing.
Cons of a hybrid EAP:
🚩 The more effort you put in initially to launch a hybrid EAP, the higher engagement will be. EAPs like Spill that assign a dedicated senior counsellor to your business are so effective because this feels like someone who is familiar, friendly and trusted within the business – a person rather than just a platform. However, this requires a little more effort up front to introduce them to the team (e.g. have them join an all staff meeting) to build up this recognition.
🚩 When you're paying for a specialist service (rather than an insurance add-on), you can expect to pay a bit more. However on a per-employee basis this difference is negligable (around 50p to £1 more per month).
Looking for a hybrid EAP provider?
You can access a long list of UK employee assistance programmes here, and filter by user rating or the type of services you need to find the best fit for your team.
Choosing the right EAP takes time
Picking the right service for your team is an important decision and it can take time to find the right solution. To help, we’ve built up a collection of articles all about researching, choosing and pitching an EAP for your company:
- The best EAP providers in the UK
- How to choose the right EAP for your team
- How to build a business case for an EAP
See Spill in action
To hear more about our EAP services and learn how Spill could support your team's mental health, book a free 30 minute demo.
