Construction organisation Costain has extended access to its employee assistance programme (EAP) to staff working in its supply chain.
The EAP provision forms part of the organisation’s overall business strategy, which includes a focus on improving employee health and wellbeing under its Costain Cares initiative. This includes encouraging other organisations to provide similar health and wellbeing support to both supply chain and permanent employees.
The Costain Cares commitment is in line with the business’ vision for creating a sustainable organisation that delivers long-term economic, environmental and social value.
The EAP, which now covers 16,500 employees and supply chain staff, offers access to a free 24/7 helpline, enabling staff to receive confidential advice. The service also provides telephone or face-to-face counselling sessions for additional emotional support.
The benefit also supports employees’ physical health via an online portal that provides access to mini-health checks, personalised health risk assessments, and fact sheets on various health-related topics.
The EAP is available to all staff within the business and supply chain staff who may be experiencing stress, worry or anxiety caused by health, family, work or legal concerns.
The service is promoted during a briefing included in the induction process.
Gavin Bye, director of safety, health and environment at Costain Group, said: “Costain has long been an industry leader on employee health and wellbeing issues and a natural next step was to extend our employee assistance programme to our supply chain. We hope our decision will see other organisations across the industry following suit.
“We all experience many challenges throughout our lives which can lead to worry and stress so we felt help and support should be offered to our entire workforce, not just our own staff. Our employee assistance programme provides a superb confidential service to help us all through the difficult times that we can face in our lives.”
