ESSCo Provides Personnel Services by Contract : An Ear for Workers’ Troubles
Executives at Hewlett-Packard’s instruments division in Marysville, Wash., noticed that a lot of employees were missing work because of injuries received on weekend hiking expeditions, so they decided to have a presentation on mountain-climbing safety.
And when an Aluminum Co. of America smelting plant in Wenatchee, Wash., began hiring women in traditionally male-dominated factory jobs, it sponsored a workshop on women’s issues, including discussion of how to with a woman in the shop?
It used to be that employees were expected to leave their personal lives at home when they came to work. But no more.
Today, workers with problems--ranging from drug abuse to worries over child care--are a major concern to their employers, and companies across the country are adding employee-assistance programs to deal with both personal and job-related problems that can affect workers’ performance and cost the company money.
Some Contract for Services
Some businesses develop their own programs, but others prefer to hire outside contractors--like Employee Support Systems Co. of Orange, the nationwide personnel services provider that conducted the mountain-climbing and women’s issues seminars. The 6-year-old business offers employee counseling on a contract basis, which many firms find easier to implement than an in-house program.
Contract counseling has another advantage, as well, according to Steve Homnack, supervisor of employee services for Martin Marietta Aerospace. Employees may be reluctant to seek help within the company because they don’t want to be a topic of discussion around the office water cooler. Using an outside contractor keeps the program confidential, said Homnack. “All we get is statistical data” on the number of employees using the service and types of problems, and “that’s the way we want it.”
The purpose of employee-assistance programs is to retain workers who are having problems, said Norman Huneycutt, president of Employee Support Systems. Frequently, the employees have experience and qualities that are valuable to the company, he said, and it costs less to rehabilitate them than replace them.
Besides, Huneycutt said, some authorities claim that “at best you have a 50% chance of hiring an employee who is any better than the one you just terminated.”
‘Enormously Cost-Efficient’
As part of its service, ESSCo conducts seminars on identifying and helping employees whose problems may be costing the company money because of frequent absenteeism or lack of productivity. “It’s enormously cost-efficient for the company,” said Huneycutt.
For that reason, programs such as these are set up so a company’s employees do not have to pay to attend. Workers and their eligible dependents can seek help themselves, or a supervisor can refer a subordinate whose job performance is suffering. Huneycutt said that about 20% of the people his counselors work with were referred by their supervisors. In most cases, use of the program is voluntary. A counselor discusses the problem with the individual, suggests methods of dealing with it and recommends additional sessions if needed.
To augment its own staff’s expertise, ESSCo frequently will hire a specialist to conduct a specific seminar or provide counseling for a particular client.
Huneycutt said his company primarily provides assessment and motivational counseling services rather than long-term treatment. If a client needs more help than the ESSCo counselor can give, a referral to an outside specialist is made.
90% Success Rate
Such counseling programs, Huneycutt said, have a 90% success rate in handling problems--success meaning that the employee is able to remain on the job with a level of performance acceptable to the employer.
Those who are not counted as successes--generally because they are not motivated to change the situation--usually leave the company, Huneycutt said.
“Relationship counseling,” which includes both personal and work situations, is the service most often requested and constitutes about 45% of ESSCo’s services, said Huneycutt. ESSCo also recommends courses of action for employees who have problems with the boss--a process that can include face-to-face meetings between worker and supervisor.
Occasionally, a personality conflict or stressful situation cannot be resolved. In some cases when that happens, Huneycutt said, “the best thing they can do is to relocate.”
Huneycutt’s company can even help with that.
The company’s services to employees with family problems have ranged from developing a pilot child-care referral system for Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co. in Los Angeles to assisting an executive who was worried about his elderly mother in New Jersey.
ESSCo Counselor Consulted
In that case, the executive consulted an ESSCo counselor, who checked with agencies in the mother’s neighborhood to assure the son that she was receiving attention through local senior-citizen programs.
ESSCo also counsels employees with drug and alcohol problems, but Huneycutt said that is not the largest part of his company’s business. In such cases, ESSCo counselors will work with employees to determine the severity of the problem. If necessary, the employee then is referred to specialized substance-abuse programs. The employer is never told of the worker’s problem, Huneycutt said.
The fees ESSCo charges its corporate clients are based on the number of employees covered. For a company with 200 or more employees, the cost is about $18 to $25 per employee per year, said Huneycutt.
Adding an employee-assistance program has paid off for Martin Marietta Aerospace at Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc. The program led to better workmanship, a lower absentee rate and an improved safety record, said Homnack. He also noted the intangible benefit of improving the quality of life for employees and said he had noticed “tremendous improvement,” particularly in cases of substance abuse.
Wellness Programs Held
Besides individual counseling, ESSCo conducts “wellness” programs for companies, encouraging employees to stop smoking and avoid chemical dependency and conducting lunchtime seminars on topics like stress management and body language.
Huneycutt, 49, is a Presbyterian minister and worked for the National Council on Alcoholism before starting ESSCo in 1979 with two partners. His co-founders have since departed to pursue other interests, leaving him as sole owner. Although he still is active in the church, Huneycutt said his motive in founding ESSCo was “to be a facilitator of improving the quality of people’s lives, without being confined to a particular religious dogma.”
Last year ESSCo had slightly more than $1 million in revenues, and Huneycutt said he is looking for 20% growth this year. The company has 25 full-time employees and about 150 therapists on retainer across the country; counselors fluent in Spanish, Vietnamese and sign language are available to meet specialized needs.
Timing Important
Huneycutt attributes the success of ESSCo to timing as much as to any other factor.
He said he was uncertain when he founded the company in 1979 whether his concept would be accepted in the corporate world. Since then, however, the number of employers who are “socially responsible” has grown, and Huneycutt said that more than half of the Fortune 500 companies now have employee-assistance programs.
