Workplace Counselling for Employers

The More Useful Question Is Why Nobody Uses It

Near enough everybody has an EAP now. Far fewer organisations can tell you how many of their people used it last year.

That is the number I would want to see, and I am deliberately not quoting you an industry figure for it, because the ones that circulate come from providers rather than from independent research. Ask yours directly. If they cannot or will not give you a usage rate for your own organisation, that is itself an answer.

When people do not use one, the reasons they give are consistent and none of them are about the quality of the counsellor. It is an 0800 number they were told about at induction two years ago. It routes through a triage call with a stranger. They are not convinced it is really confidential. And they get an allocation of sessions with whoever is available, then somebody different if they come back.

The Uncomfortable Research, Before You Spend Anything

A 2024 study by William Fleming at the University of Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre looked at 46,336 workers across 233 UK organisations, comparing people who took part in individual-level wellbeing programmes with people who did not. On multiple measures of wellbeing, participants appeared no better off. Volunteering was the single exception.

That is about resilience training, apps, mindfulness sessions and coaching rather than about counselling specifically, and it is one study. But the direction is worth sitting with. Buying provision and getting an effect are not the same transaction, and a lot of wellbeing spending is doing the first while being reported as the second.

If that makes you less inclined to buy something, good. It should.

What I Am Not

I am one person. There is no 24-hour helpline behind me, no app, no portal and no capacity to cover several sites at once.

If what your organisation needs is round-the-clock cover for a few hundred people across multiple locations, an EAP is the right instrument and you should buy one. I would rather say that than take a contract I am the wrong shape for.

What I Do Offer

Counselling for your staff, contracted directly with you, delivered by the same named person every time.

The arrangement is usually simple. We agree a number of sessions and how someone gets to me. Your people book in directly rather than being triaged by a call centre. They see me, not whoever is free. If somebody needs longer than we agreed, I tell you that is the case without telling you who or why.

In person in Wolverton for anyone within reach of Milton Keynes, or online, which removes the geography entirely and is how a lot of this works in practice.

I also provide clinical supervision to other therapists, which matters if you employ counselling or support staff who are required to have it.

Where This Beats an EAP, and Where It Does Not

It suits smaller organisations, where the person signing this off is the owner or the only HR generalist, and where a named human who keeps turning up is worth more than a national contract nobody remembers.

It also works alongside an EAP rather than instead of one. The common pattern is that the EAP handles the first few sessions and then the allocation runs out on the people who needed the most. Having somewhere to send those cases is a smaller purchase than replacing your provider.

Where it does not suit you: shift work needing cover at three in the morning, a workforce spread across the country, or a requirement for same-day access. Those are real needs and I am not the answer to them.

What You Will and Will Not Be Told

This is the part that decides whether your staff use it, so it is worth being exact.

You get to know that someone attended and that the sessions were used. You do not get to know what was said, what the problem was, or anything that would let you work out which of your people is dealing with what.

The limits on that are the ordinary clinical ones rather than commercial ones, and they are about immediate risk to life rather than about anything an employer would want to know. I set them out with each person at the start.

If you are hoping for a summary of themes across your organisation, I will not provide it for a small headcount. With ten or fifteen people it is not anonymous however it is worded, and pretending otherwise is how staff learn not to trust these arrangements.

Why a Practising Therapist Rather Than a Provider

I spent more than twenty years in corporate leadership before I retrained, so I have sat on your side of this and I know the difference between a wellbeing initiative that is genuinely meant and one that is cover.

And I still see clients every week. That matters more than it sounds, because the person your staff actually meet is the person you spoke to, and I am accountable for how that goes rather than subcontracting it.

If you want the group end of this rather than one to one work, that is corporate wellbeing workshops. If what you are really asking about is one senior person who is struggling in a role, that is executive coaching, and it should be paid for as that rather than routed through a staff counselling arrangement. This page sits under mental health support with the rest of the work that is not tied to a room in Wolverton.