Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
Are you on the hunt for the right Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for your organization? An effective EAP takes care of your most valuable asset — your employees — by providing them assistance during moments of personal strife related to mental health, substance abuse, family issues, and others. We’ve researched dozens of different EAP providers in order to guide your purchase decision, with a detailed rundown of our favorites, as well as common pitfalls, sample questions for demos and other great resources.
Between the rise of remote work, the continued COVID-19 pandemic, and our tumultuous political climate, it could be argued that EAPs have never been more vital. After all, it is a well-known fact that happy and healthy employees are more productive employees. And the cost of not providing this type of assistance can be enormous. According to the Center for Prevention and Health Services, workplaces lose $79 to $105 billion each year due to employee mental illness and substance abuse disorders. So let’s get started — dig into the below list of our top-rated vendors, along with our buying guide to streamline your decision-making process.
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best EAP companies per our research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Highly personalized, interactive, quick – this is what makes Modern Health great. All you have to do is answer a few questions, get a personalized plan, and connect with a provider.
Modern Health
Review:
Modern Health offers employees a personalized treatment plan based on their mental health needs and goals. This is usually a combination of self-help resources, behavioral coaching, group sessions, workshops, courses, and/or therapy.
As an employer, you are provided access to the Insight Hub - a portal that integrates with your existing HR information system and provides valuable information about your workforce. You can view key metrics on the overall well-being of your organization, identify at-risk populations, see how many employees are using the platform, and extend support when needed. You can also use the Engagement Resource Library to equip yourself with the resources you need to handle your workforce. However, all patient information is confidential so employees don’t have to worry about their employer gaining access to their medical files.
Modern Health
Customers:
Pixar, EA, Lyft
Zendesk, Dropbox, Pixar, Udemy, Rakuten, Gusto, and Lyft
Modern Health
Pricing:
Employers decide on a set number of sessions for employees per year. Additional sessions may cost extra if not covered by insurance.
Employers must contact Modern Health for detailed pricing.
Modern Health's subscription fee for employers depends on the number of sessions and your plan. If an employee needs additional sessions beyond what their employer offers, it may cost extra if not covered by insurance. You can contact Modern Health's sales team for a custom pricing quote.
Best For
Any business looking to provide its employees with access to therapy, coaching, and mental health resources.
Why we love it
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CoreHealth helps companies create wellness programs for their employees. By putting health assessments, biometric management, and self-help programs in one place, CoreHealth acts as an all-in-one platform for all your corporate wellness needs.
CoreHealth by Carebook
Review:
CoreHealth offers four different well-being solutions. Here's what they offer:
CoreHealth by Carebook
Customers:
AkzoNobel, Konnected, HRG, WellNow, and Health Designs
CoreHealth by Carebook
Pricing:
CoreHealth revised their pricing catalogue in February 2020. They recommend contacting a customer relationship manager for details.
CoreHealth has 4 different pricing models based on the features. Their subscriptions start from $10,000 per year and include a one-time setup fee and a per-person annual license fee. To know more about their packages and for a custom quote, you can reach out to their sales team.
Best For
CoreHealth is best for companies searching for a customizable EAP that fits to specific needs.
Why we love it
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Spring Health uses machine learning to match an employee with a personalized care plan. Care Navigators, utilization reports, and a myriad wellness programs – these are some reasons why leading employers trust Spring Health.
Spring Health
Review:
Spring Health’s EAP provides employees access to technology-driven mental healthcare, with solutions ranging from subclinical such as self-help resources and exercises to deeply clinical like coaching, therapy, and rehab. They also offer critical incident support, either virtually or on-site, whenever your team needs it.
Spring Health
Customers:
Whole Foods, Equinox, Kayak, Sequoia, and Instacart
Spring Health
Pricing:
For employees, the first 10 sessions every calendar year are free. After that, they are covered by insurance. For employer costs, contact Spring Health and talk to your benefits administrator.
For employees, the first 10 sessions every calendar year are free. After that, they will have to pay out of pocket, or in some cases, their insurance covers the costs. For employer costs, contact Spring Health and talk to your benefits administrator.
Best For
Spring Health is great for any company looking to boost mental health efforts.
Why we love it
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Lifeworks aims to counter turnover, absenteeism, and productivity problems. Its modern EAP is proactive, interactive, mobile-first, and personalized.
LifeWorks
Review:
Lifework's EAP includes a well-being platform that offers 24/7 counseling sessions and self-help wellness resources for employees and their families. You can interact with licensed mental health professionals via video, chat, telephone, face-to-face, or group sessions, depending on whatever you're most comfortable with. They are equipped to help you navigate work-related problems, burnout, relationship issues, anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders. They also provide onsite critical incident support in the case of trauma or crisis. However, unlike some other EAPs that match you with a provider in a couple of hours, Lifeworks can take up to 5 business days and up to 24 hours in urgent cases.
Employees can also access specialists in financial and legal care to help with budgeting, debt, and legal proceedings, child care, elder care, and more.
LifeWorks
Customers:
The Home Depot, Bell, Walgreens, TD Bank, and Lenovo
LifeWorks
Pricing:
While Lifeworks doesn't offer specific numbers, their service is offered on a subscription basis.
Lifeworks does not offer their pricing details upfront. To know what a monthly subscription costs, you can reach out to their sales team.
Best For
Lifeworks is best for companies looking for detailed wellness analytics along with their EAP.
Why we love it
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Designed to resolve personal concerns, workplace conflicts, and life challenges, Ulliance's EAP is cost effective, personalized, and has a high level of participation.
Ulliance
Review:
Ulliance's Life Advisor Resolution EAP Model® is one of the most robust EAPs available today. All employees will have unlimited access to a Resource Center portal with thousands of self-care resources, balanced living workshops, videos, and tips on improving mental health. They also get a flexible number of telephonic, face-to-face, or video counseling and behavioral coaching sessions with expert mental healthcare providers.
Apart from this, employees are eligible for discounted financial and legal consultations with experts, free HR & management consultations, and up to 60% off on hotels, concerts, movie tickets, travel, and theme park tickets. Ulliance's EAP also offers unlimited critical incident support in the case of employee death, accidents, robbery, or any traumatic events.
As an employer, you get assigned a dedicated Account Manager to help promote the utilization of your EAP. You also get comprehensive reports with data and insights on EAP usage and trends within your organization.
However, bear in mind that Ulliance's EAP is designed to be ROI-positive only in the long term. If you're looking for an affordable solution for the short term, then this may not be the one for you.
Ulliance
Customers:
International Automotive Components (IAC), Tower International, and TI Automotive
Ulliance
Pricing:
The pricing of Ulliance’s solutions is not disclosed on their website. You can get in touch with their sales team for a custom price quote.
Best For
Any company looking for a comprehensive employee assistance and wellness platform.
Why we love it
:
Talkspace offers an immediate, responsive, and a result-oriented care. Their network of providers is managed continuously and they have efficacy studies published in peer-review journals.
Talkspace
Review:
Talkspace offers comprehensive mental healthcare services, ranging from messaging therapy to live sessions, psychiatry consultations, medicine management, teen counselling, and couples therapy. While their services are convenient and accessible, they cannot be used as a substitute for emergent care. Further, if you’re dealing with more complex mental health issues like PTSD or chronic depression, text-based therapy or infrequent live sessions will not give you the results you desire.
Talkspace
Customers:
Blackstone, Citi, Expedia Group, and Lionsgate
Talkspace
Pricing:
Talkspace partners with health plans to provide online therapy to employees. Contact your benefits administrator for more details on the EAP.
If an employee is interested in Talkspace independently of their employer, plans start at $260 per month up to $396 per month.
Talkspace offers different subscription models based on an individual's needs and budget. If you’re an employer looking to set up an EAP, contact your benefits administrator for more details. For employees that have access to the platform, it costs nothing. However, if your employer isn't paying for it, you can choose one of the following plans:
Talkspace also offers psychiatry services at $249 for a 60-minute initial evaluation session, $365 for the initial evaluation and a follow-up session, and around $125 for every follow-up session.
Keep in mind that even if your employer cannot pay for it, Talkspace accepts many forms of insurance. To know if you're eligible, you can take their online assessment.
Best For
Any company looking for a mental health platform that delivers clinically-proven results.
Why we love it
:
Lyra Health focuses on connecting employees with top-tier mental health providers within a day. With its platform, employees can receive personalized care, develop new skills, and measure their progress.
Lyra Health
Review:
Lyra Health's EAP provides employees with mental healthcare services such as behavioral coaching, therapy sessions, medicine management, self-help resources, financial assistance, legal consultations, critical incident support, ID theft services, and child, elder, and pet care.
With a mission statement of only providing proven treatments, this EAP takes a quality-focused approach through evidence-based techniques to deliver care to your employees. Members can find the right personalized care, match with the right provider for their needs, and feel motivated and supported throughout the entire treatment journey.
Lyra Health
Customers:
Zoom, Amgen, eBay, Morgan Stanley, and Genentech
Lyra Health
Pricing:
Lyra Health is free for employees and their dependents. However, you must get in contact with the sales team to find out pricing for your company.
Lyra Health is free for employees and their dependents. To find out what it costs you as an employer, you can reach out to Lyra Health’s sales team, and they will help you out with a custom quote.
Best For
Lyra Health can benefit any company who uses it, as its reliable clinical improvements are proven by science to improve employee mental health.
Why we love it
:
Anthem's EAP offers quick and easy counseling services for employees and their family. Other than mental health services, employees can also seek counseling for adoption, pet care, legal consultations, among other things.
Anthem
Review:
Anthem's EAP service addresses a range of issues, including work/life balance, mental and emotional well-being, child, elder, and pet care, critical incidents, legal concerns, and financial issues. They offer a rich library of self-help resources such as online webinars, podcasts, and articles addressing health, wellness, parenting, education, adoption, etc.
Employees can also reach out to licensed practitioners and behavioral health coaches through online or in-person sessions. They are trained to help you address substance abuse, grief, anxiety, depression, family and relationship troubles, stress management, and more.
Apart from this, Anthem's EAP provides elder and child care support by providing access to home health agencies, nursing programs, and other childcare resources. Employees can also seek legal and financial consultations with experts as part of their EAP program.
Anthem
Customers:
Anthem
Pricing:
EAP service from Anthem doesn't cost anything for employees. Employers pay extra as part of their insurance plan, determined by state and group size.
There are three models:
Anthem's EAP solution doesn't cost anything for employees. Employers pay extra as part of their insurance plan, determined by state and group size.
They offer three different service plans. They are as follows:
Best For
Anthem's EAP is most useful for national and enterprise employers who already use Anthem as their health insurance provider. However, lower pricing models make it affordable for businesses of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Cost-effective and quick, Ginger is a mobile app that lets your employees chat with behavioral health coaches within seconds at any time of the day. Employees can also schedule video therapy with licensed practitioners.
Ginger
Review:
Ginger offers employees access to behavioral coaches in under 60 seconds, irrespective of the time of the day. Whether you're dealing with anxiety, stress, or relationship problems, Ginger's team of licensed practitioners ensure that you get the care you deserve. Though Ginger is available in all 50 states in the US, and 50+ countries worldwide, video and psychiatry sessions are confined to the United States.
Ginger
Customers:
Buzzfeed, Sephora, TaskRabbit, SurveyMonkey, and Chegg
Buzzfeed, Sephora, TaskRabbit, SurveyMonkey, and Chegg
Ginger
Pricing:
Ginger's pricing is not disclosed on their website. You can get in touch with their team for a custom quote depending on how much access to coaches and therapists your company requires. Employees and their dependents don't have to pay any fees.
Ginger's pricing is not disclosed on their website. You can get in touch with their team for a custom quote depending on how much access to coaches and therapists your company requires. Employees and their dependents don't have to pay any fees.
Best For
Any sized company will find Ginger valuable for keeping employees happy and healthy.
No two EAPs are the same, with some providing a full-spectrum of preventative care solutions for mental and behavioral health such as daily meditation apps and counseling, while others are more focused on crisis management of life challenges. Here are just a few of the practical ways the right EAP can help your organization:
An effective EAP provides a custom range of services that fits the needs of the organization — both employers and employees. But there are many pitfalls that can prevent a program from effectively serving an organization. Let’s take a look at a few of them:
As an organization, you have an obligation to help your employees care for themselves, and that extends outside of the office. But doing the right thing is far from the only benefit to be gained from providing an Employee Assistance Program. According to research from the Center for Prevention and Health Services, workplace costs of mental illness and substance abuse disorders range from $79 to $105 billion each year. An Employee Assistance Program can help these employees and combat absenteeism, lack of engagement, workplace distress and personal strife.
An EAP is a proven, cost-effective solution to many of the problems employers face today, and translates into very tangible ROI. According to the Department of Labor, employers save an average of $5 to $16 for every dollar invested in an effective Employee Assistance Program. In a recent WOS annual report, companies saw an average of 10.92 hours of work missed over a 30-day period due to mental health related issues before implementing an EAP system. After program implementation, this number was nearly cut in half to 5.64 hours — an improvement of 48 percent.
While EAPs keep identities confidential, in most cases, you will receive a usage report from your EAP provider that shows how many employees are taking advantage of your program and how they are using it. These reports can tell you if you’re getting your money’s worth by offering an Employee Assistance Program.
The cost of an EAP varies widely depending on the type of program desired, the size of the organization, the industry, and the quality of service offering. In addition to these variables, the approach to pricing can vary across providers. Providers charge on a “per use,” “per call,” or “per employee” basis.
According to recent studies, an estimated one in four adults in the United States have a diagnosable mental disorder, one in five adults have an alcohol use problem, and one in eight adults have a drug or other kind of addiction. Untreated mental health disorders and addictions can damage your employees in many ways, increasing their risk of illness, personal problems, incidents at work or school and even a family breakdown. However, more than half of employees don’t tell their employer about such problems for fear of losing their job.
Due to both their flexibility and confidentiality, EAPs allow your staff to get the help they need, when they need it. From emergency response to onsite traumatic incidents to custom content like videos and podcasts, EAPs can cover a broad spectrum of features that enhance well-being in a confidential manner and prevent absenteeism or sick leave.
Common features of top EAPs include:
When it comes time to choose a provider, one of the first steps is to attend a demo. This is one of the best opportunities your organization has to get your concerns addressed, and ultimately ensure that you’re choosing the right provider. We recommend coming up with a list of questions about the use cases most relevant to your business to have in hand during every demo you attend.
Here are a few topics to brainstorm your own questions:
Once an EAP provider has been chosen, there are several steps an organization should take to get their program up and running. First, an organization should draft an internal EAP policy that explains the following:
After the EAP policy is completed, both the launch of its program and its policy should be publicized within the organization, via internal newsletters, websites, and social networks. These communications should list any and all services available through the program, and stress that confidentiality is assured. In addition, human resources departments should set aside office hours for employees to come in and speak with the HR team about any questions they might have.
Remember that without engagement, your EAP will fail in its mission. Communication is key: speak directly to your employees about the benefit, and make sure they understand what it can do for them. Pamphlets summarizing the benefits and business cards are handy here — leave them in shared spaces, at the front desk, or anywhere else they can be easily picked up by interested employees.
EAP stands for employee assistance program.
An employee assistance program provides private assessments, counseling, and referrals to employees who have personal strife related to mental health, substance abuse, family issues, and more.
Pricing of EAPs varies based on provider. However, you should be prepared to pay on a per user, per call, or per employee basis.
Yes, EAPs are completely free to employees of your organization.
The workplace has changed dramatically in recent years, and even more so with the advent of the covid pandemic. But at the end of the day, your people remain the most essential ingredient for continued success as a company. Prioritizing employee health in times of crisis, beyond the umbrella of general health plans or wellness programs, has been proven to foster employee loyalty and boost job performance.
An intelligently structured, comprehensive, and well-implemented EAP can have a huge positive impact on your organization’s morale, productivity and your bottom line. But before we leave you to your decision-making process, we offer a word of caution: what you pay for is what you get. Many EAPs have been advertised with a cost as low as $1 per employee, but don’t count on these providers to give the necessary support your employees are looking for. Instead, please take a look at our vetted list of providers above, and ask for a demo today.
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