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What PENN Behavioral Health can do for Supervisors

PENN Behavioral Health’s Employee Assistance Program is a voluntary, professional and confidential counseling service designed to help you, your employees and their families resolve a wide variety of personal problems.

The program works with managers to provide resources for early intervention with troubled employees who may or may not be experiencing performance problems. Your EAP benefit includes the following:


1. Management Consultation - PENN Behavioral Health offers telephonic consultation with managers who are facing difficult situations with troubled employees either individually or as a group. The consultation includes guidance for resourcing employees with suggestions of counseling assistance and materials. (FOR EXAMPLE: A manager may be facing a conflict between two employees creating a disruption of the workplace. Neither employee has individual performance issues but together they are causing a problem at the work site.)


2. Informal Resourcing - PENN Behavioral Health provides managers with the ability to make general informal resourcing to troubled employees who are indicating they are experiencing personal problems or who have performance problems which may be due to personal issues which are effecting their work. Informal resourcing consist of giving the employees information regarding the PENN Behavioral Health’s program and encouraging them to seek help privately and confidentially. (FOR EXAMPLE: An employee’s performance is slowly declining and they are indicating they have personal family problems causing them some stress and anxiety. They were not aware of the EAP resources for them or their family.)


3. Formal Referrals - There may be situations where an employee’s performance or behaviors exceed acceptable levels and the manager may be in the position of needing to exert disciplinary measures. The PENN Behavioral Health program is not in any way connected with disciplinary actions and the manager should contact Human Resources to see if a formal referral for the employee is appropriate for the situation. (FOR EXAMPLE: An employee appears to be intoxicated or is showing signs of violent behavior upsetting the other employees. A formal referral may be used whenever the employee represents a threat to the safety of the work site.)


4. Immediate Resourcing - There are situations which can occur where an employee needs immediate assistance to deal with a personal problem because they are in crisis. The manager might want to pick up the phone call the EAP and speak with the counselor regarding how to immediately help the troubled employee. The manager might be instructed to encourage the employee to speak with the counselor or other emergency provisions might be made to assist in getting the employee to the help they need. (FOR EXAMPLE: An employee might receive news of a death in their family and may become extremely upset or despondent or may be in a personal crisis where they are talking about taking some drastic actions. The manager would be encouraged when they called to put the employee on the phone so that the employee could receive some immediate crisis counseling assistance. The counselor would work with the manager to assure that the employee had some immediate help.)


5. Critical Incident Stress Debriefings - PENN Behavioral Health has a complete staff of professional counselors who are skilled in providing on-site critical incident debriefings. These are offered to groups of individuals who have gone through a traumatic event which has caused them some emotional problems. Managers are encouraged to offer these to employees within 48 hours of the situation or as soon as possible to help them cope with the crisis. The manager should contact their Organization’s Human Resource Person to suggest this possibility for the employees. (SOME EXAMPLES: A death has occurred within the department which has had a major impact on the other employees. An accident has occurred on the site which has resulted in a fatality or threatened the safety of the other employees. A violent episode has unfolded between two individuals and been witnessed by other employees who are upset. A major change is occurring on the work site which is hard for some employees to accept.)


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What PENN Behavioral Health can do for Supervisors (pdf)