How does Bubble For Work compare to EAPs?

Where Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) are reactive and one off, Bubble for Work is preventive in nature giving employees back their time and peace of mind, relieving organisations of the need for an employee assistance programme in the first place. Where Employee Assistance Programmes are underutilised, Bubble for Work provides easily accessible, tangible benefits for your entire team, ensuring high engagement from the moment we launch.

Where EAPs are limited to (often over the phone) counselling services, Bubble for Work is regularly available, providing meaningful support whenever it is needed.

What is Bubble For Work?

Bubble For Work is an enhanced family support offering that provides access to three pillars of work-life benefits: Bubble Health, Bubble Wellbeing and Bubble Childcare. Through this holistic, on-demand platform every employee can receive practical, tangible support promoting balance between their work lives and personal lives.

Bubble Childcare serves as a lifeline for working parents and employees with caring responsibilities, providing wraparound care for working parents and caregivers with on-demand access to flexible, regular and emergency childcare. With many traditional childcare providers facing closure and disruptions due to covid-19, poor access to childcare is an increasingly common source of stress for working parents. Lack of childcare access and employer support can lead to disturbances in work performance, productivity and attrition (particularly for women with children).

With access to Bubble Health, employees can seek medical guidance from a network of over 70,000 CQC registered clinicians —including pediatricians, midwives, menopause specialists and gynecologists—offering on-demand family care. With the tap of a button your employees can book in time with an NHS provider delivering speedy, confidential and remotely-accessible medical advice.

With Bubble Wellbeing, employees are able to join support groups targeting personal issues that can be a hindrance to employee work performance and wellbeing (such as menopause support). Parent employees also gain access to the Working Parents Club corporate network. Each month, members are invited to engage in guided discussions led by a network of licensed, experienced wellbeing coaches, and connect with a vibrant peer support community.

What is an Employee Assistance Programme?

An Employee Assistance Programme is a benefit offered by employers allowing employees to access employer-funded counselling and other services designed to address personal and work related issues, which might be affecting work performance.

EAPs have a long history, and for many years were the only “wellbeing” benefit offered by the majority of employers. But here’s the problem. Across all industries and company sectors, they’re notoriously underutilised with only a tiny minority of people seeking help.

The reasons for this are plenty. EAPs are reactive to people at a crisis point, rather than preventing the crisis in the first place. Many employees are wary of sharing information about a mental health crisis with an employer for fear of this affecting their career prospects. Others are unaware that their employer has an Employee Assistance Programme and lack an understanding of what this provides them.

A common scenario is that a supervisor will instruct an employee who exhibits difficult behaviour (i.e. having an outburst or berating a coworker) to join their company’s EAP. However, such an extreme case is unlikely to happen with great frequency.

Being able to talk to someone about an issue anonymously can be beneficial in some cases, but for the majority of us a wider range of services intended to make employee’s lives easier and avoid reaching a crisis point are more attractive.

Get in touch to discover how Bubble For Work can help with providing flexible childcare, on-demand health access and wellbeing support to your working parents.