Professionalism, education, and employee assistance.

It was with considerable interest that I read the four essays under the heading of "Training the Next Generation of EA Professionals" in the May/June 2002 issue of the EAP Association Exchange. Professionalism and education are necessarily related; without a coherent and unifying body of thought and practice, there is no such thing as a profession. At most, there will be only a diverse group of individuals whose only guideline or standard will be a kind of pragmatic one. Unfortunately, this is the state of the employee assistance field today.

The first article is by Michal E. Mor Barak and is titled "Managing Diversity: Preparing EA Professionals to Practice in the Age of Globalization." Mor Barak's major thesis is that "[t]he next generation of employee assistance professionals will practice in a corporate environment that will be increasingly diverse and where national boundaries will blur when it comes to doing business." These EA professionals, she says, will need training that "should include instilling knowledge of diversity, discrimination, and empowerment so they will be able to initiate focused interventions, such as diversity training, support groups for women and minority constituencies, and mentorship programs to facilitate the inclusion of women and minority workers in management and supervisory positions."

The first and most obvious thing to be said about Mor Barak's essay is that however well-intentioned it may be, it is not about employee assistance. Nowhere in her essay is there any mention of the troubled employee--who is, or should be, the central focus of employee assistance--or the EAP Core Technology. If employee assistance interests her at all, it is only as a means of promoting the ideology of multiculturalism, which is a very certain guarantee that instead of inclusion and tolerance we will have a multiplicity of groups--cultural, racial, and ethnic--competing with one another for whatever corporate spoils there are to be had.

If for Mor Barak employee assistance is no more than a function of ideology, for Dale Masi it is no more than a function of social work. Masi's is the second article in the series and is titled "Professional Education: The Key to Developing Conceptual Thinking." Essentially, her essay is about social work, not employee assistance; indeed her essay might be more aptly titled "Social Work and Clinical Practice in a Corporate Setting." Almost the entire thrust of her graduate EAP curriculum at the University of Maryland is in the direction of social work. In the first year (required for all students) of the two-year program, five of the nine courses are directly related to social work. The second year of the program, on both the management track and the clinical track (especially the latter), continues the litany.

Simply put, the problem with this kind of curriculum is that it has little or nothing to do with employee assistance. Missing entirely from her article are those concepts that constitute the fundamentals of employee assistance--the troubled employee, constructive confrontation, productivity, the division of labor, the role of management in an EAP, and the nature and structure of the corporation. These, along with the more practical aspects of employee assistance such as consultation with management, supervisor training, and employee education, are the nuts and bolts of employee assistance. If they are missing in the education of employee assistance practitioners, no amount of training in clinical theory and practice will suffice to develop and maintain effective employee assistance programs.

The third article in the series is by Cynthia Sulaski and is titled "Back to Our Roots: Learning From the Earlier Generations." For Sulaski, "the premise of employee assistance made sense--a workplace resource allowing professionals to help people in the workplace. This 'hook' is what I fear is missing for many who entered the EA profession in the second half of the second generation and most likely will be missing for the third generation as well. With changes in EAP models and services, people entering our field today aren't conducting supervisory training, consulting with managers, working with human resources staff, or performing any of the other activities that provided the breadth of experience for those of us from the earlier generations."

Sulaski suggests that we must "[g]o forward by going back to our roots, to the EAP Core Technology, and learn from those in the first and second generations who previously practiced it or still do so now." Indeed, the only way the employee assistance field will survive is to return to its roots--that is, to its principles and practice as outlined in the EAP Core Technology and embodied in the experience of earlier generations.

The last article in the series is by Helene King and Angela Pittman and is titled "Our Profession Needs to Encourage Mentorship." The article is brief but very much to the point: King and Pittman state that "[e]mployee assistance is not clinical work," which is something that needs to be said over and over again in view of the fact that "[t]he larger EAP vendors have converged on the field and have redefined counseling and consultation as a mental health service, not a workplace-based service." This is in fact the case, but it is a misnomer to suggest that these are EAP vendors; they may describe themselves as EAPs, but they are essentially managed mental health care programs with little or no interest in employee assistance, at least as defined by the EAP Core Technology.

In closing, let me suggest the rudiments of an educational program more in keeping with the nature and purpose of employee assistance. First, there should be education on the EAP Core Technology and the history of the profession, followed by courses on the history and development of labor unions and corporations. The basic premise here is that employee assistance is a function of economics, not ideology or social work. Second, there should be a course on the nature and structure of the free enterprise system, including discussion of such concepts as the division of labor, productivity, private property, and the nature of management.

Last but not least, there should be intensive discussion of two key concepts, integration and systems theory, both of which are fundamental to understanding the nature and purpose of employee assistance. If employee assistance programs are to be effective, they must be integrated into the corporate structure rather than loosely attached appendages, which is the case with managed mental health care programs purporting to be EAPs. Herein lies the importance of policy statements (which have the explicit written approval of executive management), supervisor training (with its emphasis on constructive confrontation), and employee education.

Perhaps another way of saying all of this is that the central focus of employee assistance must be the troubled employee, the employee whose job performance, for whatever reason, is less than satisfactory. Everything else in employee assistance--supervisor training, consultation with managers, productivity, etc.--is derived from and rests squarely on this simple premise. Remove the troubled employee from EAPs--as some would have us do, at least implicitly--and the entire conceptual and practical structure of employee assistance collapses. Sulaski's words are germane.

Lawrence P. Mannion

Access Employee Assistance

Via Christi Regional Medical Center

Wichita, Kansas