Articles
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Not only is being a member of Employee Assistance Professionals of South Africa (EAPA-SA) an investment in one’s own growth as an EA professional, it is also an important building block in strengthening Employee Assistance as a profession in South Africa. Here is an...
Workplace Trends in 2022
If there is one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it is that we probably should not try to predict the future. Who could have foreseen a global pandemic that would turn the world of work on its head? On the turn, organisations have been forced to...
What Causes Employees to Steal?
Theft in the workplace is more common than most employers think. Employee theft is characterised as any stealing, use or misuse of an employer’s assets without permission. One in four South African companies have indicated that they have been victims of fraud, and...
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Since the first lockdown in 2020, working from home has had to become the new normal for many organisations. Almost two years later, many office workers are still working remotely, with their employers planning to continue remote or hybrid workplace models into the...
Nipping Office Gossip in the Bud
To partake in gossip seems to be a fundamental human instinct, probably because our lives are deeply rooted in groups and communities and we depend on these people to survive. Research has found that people spend nearly an hour each day gossiping. Not all of this...
Fostering Communication in The Workplace
Effective communication in the workplace is essential to engender employee collaboration, avoid missed deadlines and prevent goings-on that could negatively affect an organisation. Ineffective communication, or having a communication gap, can cause confusion, waste...
Guidelines for Increasing EAP Usage
For many years, employee assistance programmes (EAP) have recorded a trend of low utilisation within organisations across the world. This is a trend some industry professionals attribute to the stigma that surrounds mental health issues. However, with unprecedented...
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A great number of South African employees have been working from home since the start of the pandemic, making the responsibility of protecting an organisation's data, networks and apps even more of a challenge. While physical and mental wellness have been facets of...
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Unless you have been living on the International Space Station since the turn of the century, it is unlikely that you will have missed the fact that employee diversity has exploded in South Africa in the last two decades. In 2021, not only are there more women...
A Global Perspective on Prevention of Addictions and Addictive Behaviours
The average person in South Africa consumes 20 litres of alcohol per year and this is one of the highest rates in the world. The incidence of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in our country is one of the highest in the World (Stein, Ellis, Meintjes and Thomas, 2012). The...
What are the benefits of an EAP in the COVID-19 era?
The primary goal of an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) has always been to help with resolving or managing problems that can interfere with an employee's ability to perform their work. They are able to provide employees with the tools and resources that they need...
The Importance of Diversity in the Workplace
The COVID-19 pandemic has given employers lots of challenges. Not only have they had to protect the health of their employees, they continue to have to cope with far-reaching operational disruptions. At the same time, they are having to execute plans for recovery and...
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October is breast cancer awareness month. Did you know that breast cancer tops the list of cancers affecting women in South Africa? Apart from non-melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women of all races, with a lifetime risk of 1 in 25 in...
Coaching Employees Through Change
The role of any successful team leader, manager or executive in an organisation today can be likened to that of a sports coach. Their focus should centre on developing their employees into “super-star players” by helping them to overcome obstacles, building and...
An Employer’s Guide to Installing EAP Services
Employers understand that their organisation can only benefit - both from a productivity perspective and in a way that will ultimately affect the bottom line - when its employees are not struggling with overwhelming personal issues. Employee Assistance Programmes...
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Even before the pandemic, working from home was not a new concept. However, before COVID-19, many South African organisations treated it more as an occasional practice or perk, granted to specific employees. While first world countries have been embracing remote work...
How to Reduce Unconscious Bias in the Workplace
Unconscious bias in the workplace is a commonplace occurrence that impacts one person’s opinion of another, based on facts or experiences from their past. These biases can negatively affect an organisation in several ways: during the hiring process when HR or managers...
Assisting Employees in the Aftermath of Trauma
Across the globe, people are living through sustained trauma on a scale not seen in over 70 years – since the end of World War 2. In South Africa, the colossal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic along with a lasting negative effect of recent civil unrest have left...
Executive Coaching – The Future of EAPs?
When attending to employees with behavioural or performance issues, some EAP programmes may use the terms counselling and coaching interchangeably. However, by definition, coaching differs from counselling in that it is not a remedial service, and using the term...
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A toxic workplace can be defined as any place of work where the work, the atmosphere, the people, or any combination of these things cause serious disruptions in an employee’s work life and personal wellbeing. The intangible qualities that make the workplace a healthy...
Supporting employees with cognitive impairment
There is a growing trend toward embracing “neurodiversity” in the workplace through recognising their worth and hiring individuals with neurological differences. These differences include cognitive impairment, including conditions such as autism, dyslexia, ADHD among...
EAP Counselling Improves Employee Engagement and Productivity
There has been much discussion surrounding the concepts of employee wellness and employee engagement in today’s world of work, but are these connected? Does a business benefit from enhanced employee engagement in real terms when it invests in the wellbeing of its...
Supporting Employees Amid Civil Disturbance
Alongside the greatest global health challenge in over a century – brought about by COVID-19 and ensuing lockdowns – various protests were seen to mushroom around the world in 2020. 1 Among them, these protests demanded diversity, equity and inclusion, requiring...
Career Planning for the New Normal
Today’s world of work is more unpredictable than ever before. Many people have had their hard-fought career advancement come to a standstill because of unforeseen external forces, including organisation and industry disruptions brought about by COVID-19.According to...
Does Sexual Harassment Raise the Risk of Suicide?
While sexual harassment under any circumstances can wreak havoc on a victim's health and wellbeing, workplace harassment is a special kind of menace. It is like a cancer that works its way through a work environment causing disastrous results. Employees who are being...
Disability Inclusion at Work
South Africa has about 3 million people living with disabilities, equating to about 7.5% of the country's population. Will 2021 be the year that disability inclusion finally takes hold in the workplace? Today, more companies understand the value of meeting their...
EAPs role in Combating Domestic Violence
At it's core, domestic violence is about one individual exercising power and control over another. It is defined as when one person is being harmed by another person while they are in a domestic relationship. Signs of domestic violence in an employee, co-worker, or...
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Organisations often report that they’re highly committed to gender diversity. However, this commitment may not yet have translated into meaningful action. The measure of workplace gender equality being achieved is when employees are able to access and enjoy equal...
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The past almost 18 months of COVID-19 lockdown is widely reported to have caused significant strain on relationships, with local divorce lawyers reporting as much as a 20% increase in divorce cases following the most stringent levels of lockdown levels in South Africa...
Webinar 04 June: Moving through loss and grief
Change creates loss; grief is a result of experiencing this loss. In today’s COVID-19-plagued world grief is rife, not only because people have lost loved ones, but also because we have lost hands-learning, our routines, the liberty to attend celebrations or rituals,...