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Q&A Time: Catching Up With Jane Mitchell

You may have noticed that our Beyond EAP monthly newsletter updates are signed ‘Sandie and the Janes’.While you can easily find out more about the team on our website’s About page, we felt it was high time we introduced our followers to each member a little more personally – starting with Jane Mitchell: otherwise known as one of the ‘Janes’!...

Beyond EAP: A Year in Review 2024

“When I was referred to Beyond EAP I was overwhelmed by recent events in my life and struggling to cope.  I now understand that I can only support others when my own basic needs are met.”...

Christmas is Coming, But What If You’re Still Grieving?

For many of us, the arrival of Christmas is a relief.  We can finally down tools and relax, as we look forward to happy celebrations with our loved ones and welcoming a new year filled with possibilities.But by contrast, the festive season can evoke a sense of dread in people who are struggling with grief.  Raucous, joy-filled get-togethers can only increase the deep sadness and isolation they may feel, particularly during their first Christmas without a dear loved one around....

When Is the Right Time to Assign Employee Bereavement Support?

When you have been providing bereavement support and advice to HR departments for over a decade, as I have, you get used to the same questions coming up.(There’s no shame in that, by the way.  Questions show that you care, and are concerned about doing the right thing by your employees).One of the most common questions is: “When is the right time to signpost your support to our bereaved employee?”...

Digital Detox: Our Guide to Finding Yourself Again

How would you feel if I asked you to turn off your phone and put it away in a drawer for a day or two?You might worry about missing an important call, or a viral video that everyone will be talking about except you.  You might wonder what you’d do with an evening free of social media updates and instant messaging.I’m currently preparing for my second two-day digital detox of the year: something I was unsure about at first (I run my own business, after all!) but soon found hugely benefic...

How Does Your Company Retain Key Employees?

If you’re not sure how to answer this question – or your answer is “it doesn’t” – then you don’t need me to tell you there’s a problem!However, one thing to take comfort from is that retaining top talent is becoming more and more of a challenge.  An article posted on HR Grapevine at the start of this year stated: “Recruiting and retaining employees has overtaken the cost-of-living crisis as the industry’s biggest obstacle for the coming year”.Now that we’re over half...

And Just Like That… Beyond EAP is 10 Years Old!

Forgive me for stealing Carrie Bradshaw’s iconic catchphrase, but these past 10 years really have flown by “just like that!”This time 10 years ago, I couldn’t imagine that my grain of an idea – to support employees through challenging life events – would grow into a trusted company that partners with global organisations to do exactly that.But then, we are all human and we all experience difficulties from time to time.  Sometimes these take the form of traumatic events that, sad...

Tackling Postpartum Trauma and Depression… in Men

Did the inclusion of “men” in the title of this post surprise you?Just for a moment, think about how you might feel if a male employee or colleague told you about his recent traumatic birthing experience. It’s possible that you’d feel tempted to scoff, even if only inside, at the very idea of a man talking about postpartum depression.  Men are lucky, you might think, because they don’t have to endure the painful process of actually giving birth. So really, what have they...

The ‘Blue Monday’ Myth: Why Suicide Is More Prevalent in Spring, and How Employers Can Build a Year-Round Culture of Support

Forgive me for mentioning suicide during what’s often seen as the most uplifting and optimistic season of the year.However, I’m a mental health professional who has provided employee wellbeing support for many years.  That means I understand only too well how, for some people, springtime can herald pain rather than pleasure....

Mind Your Language! How The Words We Use Change Over Time

Beyond EAP celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024 – a fact I still can’t quite believe!I don’t need to tell you that lots of things have changed in the past decade (we all remember Covid, after all).  But one particular change I’ve noticed is in the language I’ve been using to describe self-development and wellbeing.Just as fashions change, so do the words we use.We humans are constantly expanding our vocabulary, since new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary every ye...

In the Hot Seat: Q&A with Sandie Dennis, Founder of Beyond EAP

With Beyond EAP’s 10th anniversary approaching, I found myself reflecting on the many employees we’ve supported in a variety of different situations. As I reflected, something interesting occurred to me. We ask so many questions in the course of our therapy work, so why not turn the tables?I then made the (brave!) decision to offer an employee we’ve supported the chance to ask me anything they wanted: about Beyond EAP and about me personally.What would they most want to know? Read on to fi...

Why Does Your Employee Keep Resisting Support?

As an HR professional, you might have experienced the following scenario. A line manager talks to you in confidence about an employee whom they feel needs extra help.  Yet when you approach the employee to offer the required support, they aren’t as receptive as you expected them to be.  They might resist your recommendations altogether, or the therapist you referred them to later mentions that they’ve been cancelling their appointments.Thankfully, we rarely encounter this scen...

What Really Happens in a Beyond EAP Therapy Session?

Partly due to the necessary confidentiality that surrounds it, therapy can feel like a mysterious practice in which all kinds of strange things take place behind closed doors. As such, there can be some misconceptions about what therapy sessions involve.  I’ve personally had conversations with company directors who assume I’ll treat their employee’s brain like a malfunctioning computer: quickly logging in and deleting the past!In reality, nobody has the power to delete somebody e...

Beyond EAP: A Year in Review 2023

It’s time for our Beyond EAP end-of-year review, which as ever, includes plenty of ups and downs.  One particularly significant ‘up’ for us was the launch of our first online training course, How to Successfully Support Employees Through Maternity Leave… and Beyond.We’re extremely proud of our specialist training, which was developed by popular request and has already helped many employers.  Click here to find out more, and pre-register for our upcoming courses.Broaching the ...

What employee therapy do we provide at Beyond EAP?

Note: this is a follow-on from our previous blog post: “Can’t HR provide workplace therapy?”When people hear the word “therapy”, many aren’t sure exactly what it means.  They might know that you’re supposed to feel better after receiving therapy, but how this happens remains a mystery.It’s partly for this reason that HR professionals can be expected to provide all manner of what is seen as ‘people’ support: for example when an employee becomes seriously ill, or they’ve...

“Can’t HR provide workplace therapy?”

In August 2022, I shared a blog post about the benefits of counselling in the workplace.  It was widely-read and I received a lot of feedback on the content: in particular the section that asked if HR could provide workplace counselling.Much of the feedback I received came from HR professionals who rightly bemoaned the fact that they are expected to take care of “anything to do with people” – including counselling and even intensive therapy!...

Mishandling Flexible Working Requests

I’ve recently had a family member go through a really bad experience regarding her flexible working request with her employer. *Hearing such bad practice, I wanted to highlight how this could have been avoided and how it leaves the employee feeling on their return to work.When an employee goes on Maternity leave, behind the scenes there are major decisions made around whether to even apply for a Flexible Working Request. Then there are the hours of pondering, planning, and considering the docu...

How to deal with grief

Grief is the emotional reaction to a loss; mourning is the process we have to go through to adjust to the world after a person has diedGrief is intensely personal, contradictory, chaotic and an unpredictable internal processGrief causes us physical and psychological pain and it cannot be avoided but instead navigated. It hurts!To grieve we need to find a way of ending the pain of loss, not to fight it or block it. It requires a lot of hard work and the process has to be worked through to enable ...

An alternative view on new motherhood and work

It can be difficult to speak openly about the pressures of new motherhood and work.From the moment you tell your employer that you’re expecting, it’s easy to feel as though you’re letting them down.Then, once your baby is born – and it feels as though your entire world has changed – it’s on to worrying about how you’ll cope when you return to work. Will you be able to catch up straight away... and will your colleagues be sympathetic if ‘business as usual’ takes a little longer ...

The Seven Key Pillars of Health and Wellbeing

“Health” can also refer to the emotional, mental, and even social aspects of ourselves (as many of us discovered during lockdown!)It is the combination of these crucial factors that paint a comprehensive picture of our health and wellbeing.Many employees have been referred to me for support over the years, due to their unhealthy reactions to stress. These reactions can occur on a daily basis, with the employee usually only sleeping for a few hours. They then feel too tired and unmotivated to...

How to Recognise Situational Depression

Perhaps you weren’t aware that there was more than one form. Yet throughout lockdown, you may have unexpectedly gone through what many people refer to as ‘down’ days.Unsurprisingly, this is a subject I’ve heard a lot about over the past weeks. Several of the employees I support have mentioned experiencing ‘down’ days for the first time, or that they are supporting a loved one who is going through them.These days can feel particularly terrifying if you haven’t experienced them befor...

Alcohol as Self-Medication. How to Spot the Signs

One of the most significant changes we have noted at Beyond EAP is that more employees have turned to substances like alcohol, to help them cope with life’s daily demands.When we think about all the brandnew challenges Covid-19 brought, this may not seem surprising. Suddenly, we were thrown into home-schooling our children, providing round-the clock care for elderly loved ones, or supporting our families through grief, stress, and illness all while trying to keep a roof over our heads in a ne...

Employee Trauma Support: A Practical Guide

What does the word 'Trauma' mean to you? Everybody has their own personal definition of trauma, and that’s because trauma affects us all in very different ways.Many people assume that trauma can only result from a unique event that is recognisably shocking, such as being a victim of a serious crime.But the truth is that physical and emotional trauma can be caused by any number of life events, including those that may appear ‘harmless’ to those on the outside.That’s why our experienced th...

Boost wellbeing, ease stress and sleep better

Whenever I begin supporting a new employee, I always ask them about their eating habits.You might think this would be a strange question, when I specialise in supporting mental health. Yet answers have included somebody taking in nothing but coffee for two whole weeks, then wondering why they were on the brink of a ‘breakdown’.I’ve been there myself, by the way.In my twenties, I followed a dreadful diet. I went through several losses and periods of deep trauma, and I found it extremely dif...

How to Speak to Someone Who Is Grieving

When I was seventeen, my best friend’s Mum died from cancer.Sadly, she had had the illness for a long time, which gave me some space to think about how I would support my friend when she needed me the most.But when the tragic time finally came, I felt totally unprepared.It was incredibly uncomfortable. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I tip-toed around the subject whenever it couldn’t be avoided. But mostly, I kept quiet, for fear of saying the wrong thing.I was afraid of upsetting ...