What do you do when the emotional and psychological health of staff is having a detrimental effect on creativity, work performance and the effectiveness of the company?

Increasingly, companies and institutions are turning to Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) to help employees, and their families, to identify and resolve personal problems.

It is estimated that as many as a third of all US workers are covered by EAPs. In Britain, almost 2 million employees have access to an EAP more than twice the 800,000 people covered in 1990.

In Ireland, multinational companies were the first to provide them. The public service followed, with staff in government departments and some health boards and local authorities now having access.

Mr Maurice Quinlan, director of the EAP Institute, explains that an EAP is a confidential support and counselling service provided by companies or organisations for employees and their dependants.

"The initial service is paid for by the company by contracting with either an internal or external EAP provider," he says.

"The initial service would be eight counselling sessions. After that, if a person requires long-term treatment it may be covered by VHI or BUPA; or sometimes the company will advance the cost of treatment and recoup it by deducting from salary."

Last month, Trinity College, Dublin, started its first employee assistance programme. It covers all staff academics, cleaners, administrators and librarians.

Mr Colman Dunne, director of EAP Associates in Dun Laoghaire, describes Trinity's programme as a "breakthrough into a big institutional area that had tended to shy away from them".

He says that EAPs first came to Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s through multinational companies.

They originated in the US during the 1960s as a means of tackling alcohol dependency in the workplace. Today's EAPs address a range of problems.

These include: relationship issues, inside and outside the workplace, like bullying or sexual harassment at work, and family or marital difficulties at home; bereavement issues; emotional and psychological difficulties like stress, anxiety and depression; eating disorders; and addiction problems like alcohol or gambling-dependency, or addictions to prescribed drugs like anti-depressants and tranquilisers.

EAPs can also offer managers a resource to discuss ways of dealing with "problem employees who have not responded to standard management practices", according to EAP Associates literature.

Mr Dunne says that a group of 10 or 12 companies each employing 20 to 40 employees could form a co-operative and retain the services of an EAP provider for a half-day or day per week.

He says an EAP service on a half-day a week basis for an average medium-sized company employing around 250 people would cost £10,000 to £15,000 a year or about £20,000 a year on a one-day-a-week basis.

"If the EAP saves one day's sick leave for each employee, it has more than paid for itself," he says.

Mr Jack Nash, SIPTU regional secretary for the Dublin private sector, who deals with more than 1,000 companies and 40,000 workers, finds the new EPA at Trinity College "highly encouraging, very innovative" and a model for other institutions.

"It's really to be welcomed. A good EAP will add to a better industrial relations environment. Not enough companies have EAPs," he says.

He is supportive of EAPs "insofar as they're genuinely designed to assist" and so long as they're not designed to avoid industrial relations issues.

"Part of the difficulty is that problems might be farmed out," he says. "It's not helpful if an employer keeps saying `I've a worker with a problem' when it may actually be an industrial relations issue."

Mr Nash believes companies in the insurance and financial services sector should establish EAPs.

He believes, especially in this sector, there can be pressure to reach targets, there's "always a faster young man behind you" and "managers are being put under enormous pressure".

He says a "new elitism is being created" among those who understand technology, and managers under stress can be told: "You should have been able to take the pressure."

He believes an EAP programme is necessary for companies not to lose good people. The poaching of staff "puts more pressure on staff who are there".

But he cautions that EAPs should be set up "with the collaboration of the unions and not as a replacement for other structures. People are suspicious if the union is not involved". Mr Nash says confidentiality and voluntary participation are both essential. Being compelled to attend doesn't work, he says.