A growing number of employers are putting their EAPs into more active roles, such as working closely with disability insurers and supervisors to identify depressed employees, says Marcia Carruthers, chief executive officer of San Diego-based Disability Management Employer Coalition. Some companies, she says, identify employees with a disability or workers comp claim who may be depressed and offer them the EAP or even require EAP participation as a form of “behavioral risk management.”

Hartford Financial Services Group found positive results. In a 2007 study of employees at companies who were simultaneously covered by disability insurance from Hartford and were enrolled in a ComPsych Corp. employee assistance program reported the average short-term disability leave at employers offering the EAP lasted 54.5 days, 14.5 days shorter than at companies without EAPs. Furthermore, it showed that one-third of employees who used the EAP returned to work after their disability leave, compared with one in five for those who did not.

The Hartford study also identified a behavioral component in many short-term disability claims for physical conditions. While 52 percent of the employees said they used the EAP mainly for behavioral reasons, only 26 percent of the same employees cited behavioral issues as the main reason for their disability filing.