Can EAP Help Protect Your Stock Value? Here’s What CEOs Should Know.

Dan Feerst wrote a great blog post this week about the relationships between employee assistance programs (EAP), social media and a company’s stock value.  He rightly points out that EAP helps prevent issues that can escalate into PR nightmares or trigger shareholder jitters.  He also showcases a Bank of America example that will pull at your heart strings, incite your anger and, if you’re in HR, scare the heck out of you.

At the heart of Dan’s argument is a nearly 10-minute long YouTube video called Why Bank of America Fired Me by a former customer service representative from the collections department at BofA.  In the video, the employee clearly outlines her experience at BofA, policies that she believes were hurting customers and how she tried to help people.

Bottom line:  Reports say she told customers to lie and that’s why she was fired.  But, it’s hard not to see her side, or feel empathy for her when she says: “The [things I had to do at work]… They kept me up at night.”

Her video, viewed by more than 180,000 people so far, really demonizes BofA.  The media is already jumping on her story and my guess is that the average consumer will see her as a hero.  Regardless of whether it triggered BofA’s stock slide at the time, the story will not go unnoticed by investors.

So what could BofA have done differently?

In addition to BofA’s financial practices and its policies towards customers, I think it’s important to understand how EAP could have helped the organization prevent this entire situation.

Here’s what I’d say to any CEO that wants to avoid BofA’s current dilemma.

• Get a High-Touch EAP.  High-touch EAPs help businesses resolve issues before they escalate into mass turn-over, law suits or public slander.  You need an EAP that is HR’s employee relations partner; an EAP that can work with HR and management to address issues that, left untreated, will have a financial impact and potentially damage your brand.
• Promote EAP From the Top Down, Regularly.  Every supervisor, manager and employee needs to know how and when to contact the EAP, and that you – the executive leadership – want them to.  All it takes is one manager to “road-block” employee concerns before employees find another way to vent.  Before they do it all over the internet, you need to make it clear that you want them to call the EAP, a safe and confidential resource, for guidance.  The EAP will work with you to find a solution that doesn’t expose your business or the employee to further turmoil.
• Be Open to Systemic Change.  Because EAPs are confidential, they are able to track issues and trends that you would otherwise be unaware of.  But not every issue can be solved by counseling an employee or bringing in an organizational development consultant to address team dynamics.  If your EAP is seeing a trend around a specific issue, it may be systemic to your organization.  That means the organization needs to make changes.  Intelligence is only useful if you use it to make informed decisions.  Failing to make changes at that point may very well open you up to a landslide of legal, financial and brand image challenges.   

EAP can do a lot more than this for an organization and costs pennies-on-the-dollar compared to what you pay for other benefits, but I agree with Dan that good EAPs are “loss prevention mechanisms.” 

Basically, EAP can be a defensive weapon in a CEO’s S.O.S (Save Our Stock) armory.  Never leave home without it.

Tags: Bank of America, BofA, CEO, CEOs, Dan Feerst, EAP, Employee Assistance Programs, stock, YouTube