The journey to strengthen our profession.

Upon reading the title of this column, you probably wondered, "What best practices? Whose best practices? And just who determines what constitutes a best practice?"

If you have spent even a small amount of time over the past few years reading the current business literature and specifically the latest information about quality improvement or business process re-engineering, you no doubt have come across the term "best practice." Although initially applied to the manufacturing aspects of businesses and the operational functions and processes of organizations, the best practice concept has spread into service industries and the public and nonprofit sectors as well. Even volunteer organizations and corporate, industry, and community boards are looking to best practices as a means of assessing their operations and measuring enhancements against the quality performers in their industry or the market at large.

Few of us would argue that the best practice concept has no place in the employee assistance field. Our profession, after all, is committed to providing high-quality services to our employee and employer clients, whether through an independent and labor-based member assistance program, an internal EAR or an external EAP vendor. Knowing the best practices of our profession and striving to meet or exceed them is not only good business, it is essential to customer and client service, critical to quality assurance, and vital to consumer protection.

Each of us has an obligation to our profession to "stretch" our programs and ourselves and be the premier service delivery operation in our workplace, our community, and our marketplace. Using best practices not only keeps us competitive, it also keeps us on the cutting edge of providing our respective employee, member, and organizational clients with the latest thinking and services to meet an ever-changing and, at times, more demanding work environment.

In that spirit, we are approaching this column as a journey that we will all take together. We do not want this to be a definitive checklist of the standards of our profession, but rather a forum for you, our EA colleagues, to share your experiences with, and ideas about, the best practices of our profession. Through this column, our professional standards, codes of professional conduct, international guidelines, and national standards can "come alive" in the tried-and-true experiences of professionals and programs in our field. Each of us will have the opportunity to benefit from the wisdom and experience of our colleagues who have demonstrated best practices that--

* Position EAPs to be vital contributors to the professional and personal lives of employees and union members across the globe;

* Apply a generic standard to the unique cultural and business needs of a particular country; and/or 

* Solidify an EAP'S standing as a key component of a business' or labor association's operations and as a service woven into the fabric of the business, industry, or labor organization.

PINNACLE OF OUR PROFESSION

To begin, we need to arrive at a common understanding of what constitutes best practices. For most organizations, best practices are documented strategies, processes, and service delivery systems and tactics that position them as market leaders. The manufacturing industry, for example, has long understood the value of using data and real-world experiences to drive business decisions, particularly when considering new manufacturing initiatives or product ventures. Benchmarking against industry best practices has proven invaluable in helping these organizations identify operational or manufacturing weaknesses, pinpoint the best approaches for improving performance and the quality of products and/or services, and devise the best plan for implementing enhancements.

Within the employee assistance field, some EAP organizations have studied, assessed, implemented, and honed a specific series of practices to help place themselves and their EA professionals at the pinnacle of our profession. These organizations are driven to excellence and seek to rise above the competition by delivering quality services in an efficient and effective manner. If such an organization is an internal program, the EAP is viewed as the critical human element in the workplace; if it is an external provider, the EAP is considered the premier service among its competitors.

Will we find uniformity in our own best practices? Probably not, since our profession represents the convergence of disciplines as varied as the organizations and workforces we serve and the nations in which we deliver our services. What works well in one country may not translate to another culture or nation; similarly, what works well in a unionized workforce may not be as effective with a non-represented group of employees. But we hope to find examples, experiences, and documented outcomes to help each of us stretch our understanding of the practice of employee assistance.

We look for this column to be a showcase for exemplary processes and innovations in the practice of employee assistance and the operation of EA programs. And that's where you come in. This column will only be as good as the ideas and processes you submit to be featured. We are looking for examples of programs that are innovative yet still reflect the EAP Core Technology. We invite contributors who are on the cutting edge of service deliver, operations, and research practices in our profession and are able to document and present their achievements in a format that enables colleagues to find immediate applications for their own practice. We are interested in learning about the best practices in our profession, discovering who is practicing them, and determining whether and how they can be implemented elsewhere.

This is certainly a tall order, but an exciting one as well. We invite you to join us in our journey, either as a contributor or an engaged reader, as we undertake to discover our best practices, contribute to the vitality of our profession, and bring our standards, guidelines, ethics, and service delivery models to life.

Bern Beidel is director of the Office of Employee Assistance at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Kristine Brennan is executive director of Continuum Employee Assistance-Training-Consulting in Lincoln, Neb. The Authors are co-chairs of the Ethics and Standards Subcommittee of EAPA's Professional Practices Committee