Employee Assistance Programs are job-based strategies for the identification, motivation, and treatment of alcoholic and other troubled employees. EAP's rely on using the double-strategy of constructive confrontation and the use of counseling services. The synergistic effect of this dual strategy has been proven to be very effective in improving the performance of alcoholic and other troubled employees.
EAP's use the Job Performance Standard to identify which employees with alcohol and other personal problems. This standard is derived from the basic principles of industrial jurisprudence, which maintain that employers have a legitimate right to intervene in an employees personal life only when job performance is adversely affected.
Within this context, job performance is not the earliest sign of a personal problem but it is an early sign to supervisors that something is amiss and that they should take some corrective action to help the employee improve his/her job performance.