An impact evaluation on the clinical services within the EAP of the Limpopo Department of Economic Development Environment and Tourism

Abstract

The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) in South Africa issued a directive in the Public Service Regulations (2001), as amended, instructing government departments to establish Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs). In the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (LEDET) an EAP was first introduced in 2002. The role of the programme was to provide EAP clinical services to the public servants with the aim to promote a healthy workforce that is effective and to reduce ineffectiveness due to work-related stressors. An EAP’s main focus is to provide psychological interventions and to provide counselling and trauma debriefing as well as making follow ups on troubled employees. Up to date, the EAP in LEDET was not formally or informally evaluated. EAP clinical services impacted/contributed positively on the work performance of the service users. EAP clinical services improved/contributed to the overall quality of life for service users; the EAP clinical services improved/contributed to the relationship of service users with their co-workers and management, and the EAP clinical services improved the relationship of service users with their family members, especially in cases where the referral was due to family problems. The recommendations of this study are offered as a guideline to ensure that EAP in LEDET maintain and strengthen EAP clinical services in line with the EAPA-SA Standard Document. The EAP should be marketed at all times to increase awareness of the programme to all employees. All EAP professionals to keep all appointments, and follow-up sessions to improve the credibility of the programmes to their clients. Managers should be involved in EAP, especially when it comes to referring employees to EAP services. It is also recommended that in order to improve the impact of EAP clinical services is to ensure that all reported cases are attended to and also to evaluate the impact regularly. Hence, it was the goal of the study to evaluate the impact of the clinical services within the EAP at the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism. In order to achieve this goal, a quantitative research approach was adopted to evaluate the programme with a questionnaire as data collection instrument. Quantitative data was collected from employees (n=45) who utilised the clinical services offered by the EAP in LEDET during 2012-2014. The results revealed that of the respondents who utilised clinical services rated clinical services as excellent (62.2%), while 35.5% indicated that it was good. Only 2.2% of the respondents rated the services they utilised as average. These results imply that the EAP clinical services exceeded their level of expectations. Respondents based their level of satisfaction on different EAP clinical services they utilised, which included trauma, aftercare and reintegration services within LEDET.