Employee Assistance Programs
Stop waiting for people to reach out. Reach in.
An EAP is the most common answer to workplace mental health in Australia, and around 5% of people ever use one. This hub covers what EAPs genuinely do, what they cost, how to choose a provider, and what it looks like when support reaches every person instead of waiting for the few who ask.
What is an Employee Assistance Program?
An Employee Assistance Program is a confidential counselling and support service an employer provides, typically a capped number of sessions per employee per year, accessed by self-referral through a phone line, portal or app. The model is valuable for the people who use it and structurally limited by its direction: support waits to be asked. Around 1 in 4 people face a mental health challenge in a year, around 5% call the EAP, and the gap between those numbers is where most workplace harm quietly grows.
What decides whether an EAP is worth it
Four things separate a program that supports people from a number in the onboarding pack:
Reach, honestly measured
Around 5% of a workforce ever uses a traditional EAP. The service is real and the counsellors are good; the design waits for people to ask, and asking is hardest exactly when it matters most.
Duties an EAP does not discharge
No Australian law requires an EAP, but WHS law requires psychosocial risks to be identified, assessed and controlled. A reactive service contributes little evidence to any of those steps.
Waits and caps decide value
Three to six sessions a year is the market norm, and callback delays are the stories buyers trade. What happens at the cap, and how long someone waits to speak to a person, matter more than the brochure.
The cost that hides in plain sight
Divide any EAP quote by the people it actually reaches and the cheapest plan becomes the most expensive support you buy per person helped. Cost per person reached is the honest unit.
The questions this hub answers
Is an EAP legally required?
No law mandates an EAP in Australia. What the law does require is managing psychosocial risk: identify, assess, control and review, in consultation with workers. An assistance program can support that cycle; it cannot substitute for it.
Is an EAP Mandatory in Australia? What the law actually requires.What an EAP costs, and what it really costs
Published Australian guides put standard retainers around $30 to $150 per employee per year, with session caps of three to six. At around 5% utilisation, even the cheapest plan works out near $200 per person actually reached, per year.
What Does an EAP Cost in Australia? The published numbers and the reach arithmetic.How to choose a provider
Four provider categories, five consensus criteria, and the questions that expose weak programs: utilisation transparency, average wait times, what happens at the session cap, and whether reporting maps to psychosocial risk factors you can act on.
EAP Providers in Australia: How to Choose (and What to Ask).The layer before the phone number
Support systems prevent crises when someone notices early and knows what to do next. Regular check-ins, trusted peers and clear escalation pathways catch what a hotline structurally cannot.
How Workplace Support Systems Prevent Mental Health Crises: the full architecture.Support that reaches in
The proactive model inverts the direction of care: a scheduled, confidential check-in call reaches every team member, concerns route to trained Mental Health First Responders, and de-identified themes become psychosocial risk reporting.
The Proactive EAP: how scheduled outreach reaches 100% of your people.How the Proactive EAP changes the model
ShareTree's Proactive EAP keeps the professional support and inverts the direction of care:
Scheduled outreach calls
Every team member receives a confidential check-in call on a set cadence, conducted by voice AI or a trained Mental Health First Responder depending on plan, with up to three attempts each cycle. Nobody has to ask first.
Daily check-ins between calls
The Emotional Pulse app keeps a 30-second daily habit, trusted peer connections and two-click support open between outreach cycles, so signals surface as they form.
Reporting mapped to ISO 45003
De-identified themes from check-ins are mapped to the ShareTree ISO 45003-based taxonomy of 20 psychosocial factors across three domains, with clinically reviewed definitions, giving leaders register-ready risk intelligence, never individual disclosures.
Support people end up owning
When clinical care is the right next step, MHFRs guide the person to their GP for a Mental Health Care Plan, unlocking Medicare-rebated psychology with a practitioner of their own choosing, not capped by a session limit.
Explore the topic further
The decision
The evaluation
Frequently asked questions
See what reaching in looks like for your team
If the reach arithmetic in these guides is the conversation you need to have internally, have it with real numbers. A 30-minute discovery call walks through your headcount, your current EAP economics, and what a scheduled check-in with every person would look like, with a full quote and proposal to follow if you want one.
Explore the Proactive EAP