A new report from ComPsych Corp. analyzed industry, gender and age differences in millions of work/life calls to employee assistant programs (EAP) over a 12-month period and found health care employees are the most stressed, men outpace women in percentage of relationship calls and retail workers have the highest percentage of depression.
“As we learn more about people's issues, preferences and concerns as they relate to age, gender and occupation, we can customize our EAP/work-life programs to meet the challenges of an organization’s unique population,” said Dr. Richard A. Chaifetz, chairman and CEO of ComPsych.
In addition to determining that employees in the health care industry had the highest percentage of stress and anxiety-related calls, the report also found that:
- Workers in the retail industry had the highest percentage of calls related to psychological disorders such as depression.
- Surprisingly, the percentage of men calling for relationship counseling (22 percent) outnumbered that of women (18 percent).
- Men were almost five times as likely to call about alcohol and chemical dependency issues.
- Employees in their 20s had the highest percentage of alcohol and chemical dependency calls.
- Occupational-related calls – manager referrals for poor performance, absenteeism or interpersonal problems – increased in frequency according to age, with employees in their 50s and 60s placing the highest percentage of calls.
- Fifteen percent of all calls from construction industry employees were alcohol/chemical dependency related, more than twice as many as the next industry.
ComPsych Corp. is the world’s largest provider of employee assistance programs.
