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Combining Fertility Treatment and Work: Advice for Employers

It’s a simple fact that having children changes your life. As such, most employers have clear legislation-guided policies in place, which allow for these natural and expected life-changes. Soon-to-be parents understand that they are entitled to a certain amount of leave, some of which is paid. They will be encouraged to keep in touch with their employer during their leave, as a temporary replacement is asked to step in and cover their work. When they return, they will be expected to eas...

Beyond EAP: A Year in Review 2022

2022 has been a year of memorable ups and downs. The good news is that the world gained greater control of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the outbreak of war in Ukraine, coupled with unprecedented rises to the cost of living, have presented challenges on a global scale. Happily, employers are aware of these challenges, and many are prepared to offer help. In January, Beyond EAP ran a LinkedIn poll which asked employers if they planned to increase employee support in 2022. 100% said yes. Long Cov...

The Links Between Wellbeing and A Good Night’s Sleep

In my role as an employee support coach, there is one recurring issue that employees talk to me about over and over again.“They’re not getting enough sleep.” Perhaps fortunately, it’s a problem I understand very well. I have been plagued with sleep issues since childhood; an area that I believe has contributed to the bouts of depression that I experienced earlier in my life.  And so, I’ve made it a personal mission to conquer my sleep issues, once and for all. I have even recently...

Why Boundaries + Balance = Self-Care

“What are you doing for you?”Regardless of their individual challenges or specific issues, I tend to ask this question of every employee I support. But usually, the question is met with silence, and then by a confused stare. I understand why. All I have to do is think back to the time, around twenty years ago, when I felt overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and utterly lacking in energy. I knew nothing about how to practice self-care. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be where I was at that point in ...

5 Things She Could Be Thinking (But Not Saying)

How to Manage Maternity Leave, So You Retain Happy and Talented EmployeesMany employers think of the words “maternity leave” as a signal for change.Change as in: who’s going to provide maternity cover, and for how long? How and when will you keep in touch with your new mum, so that when she finally returns to work, she can pick up right where she left off?Meanwhile, the new mum herself will be experiencing an overwhelming barrage of emotions, some of them for the very first time.While issu...

What are the Benefits of Counselling in the Workplace?

Does the idea of counselling in the workplace strike you as strange?   Perhaps, you may think, the terms are a little oxymoronic.  From our experience at Beyond EAP, many employers believe that any problems should be left at home.   Why?  Problems are personal, not professional.  Anyway, pausing problems and challenges to focus fully on work – which, let’s not forget, employees are paid to do – can be therapy in itself, can’t it?  Bringin...

Why Work with a Corporate Wellness Coach?

In our experience, the words “workplace wellness coach” can cause nervous confusion among corporate employers. For one thing, they’re not sure how a “wellness coach” might work… so will this person start causing disruption in the workplace? For another, how can anybody coach wellness, when the term itself is so ambiguous? In fact, wellness does have a clear definition, although it isn’t widely known and is often misunderstood. The Global Wellness Institute officially defines w...

Riding an Emotional Rollercoaster: Why Adoptive Parents Need More Support at Work

“It’s OK, you can always adopt”. If you’re unable to have a child, the chances are you’ll have heard these words before.  But although they’re usually meant well, the people saying them often have little understanding of the many complications involved in adopting a child. Some of the employees we have supported through the process have likened it to riding an emotional rollercoaster. Similar, but not the same: maternity and adoption  At Beyond EAP, we have worked with many...

Yes, You Can Recover from PTSD

In my previous post, I discussed the importance of respectful, non-judgemental trauma support. This is not just because trauma affects different people in different ways, but because its effects can be long-lasting and life-changing.   A traumatised nervous system can take weeks to return to ‘normal’, so employers should be wary of encouraging their employees back to work immediately following a traumatic event. Yet with the right support, we all have the potential to hea...

The Truth About Trauma Support

What does the word “trauma” mean to you? As a trauma therapist who supports different employees from all over the world, I’ve heard countless definitions over the years.  Many of them assume that trauma can only result from a unique event that is recognisably shocking, such as being a victim of crime, or witnessing a major terrorist attack. In reality, physical and emotional trauma can be caused by any number of life events, including those that may appear ‘harmless’ to those...

"Maternity Leave is Just a Long Holiday, Isn’t It?"

If I had a pound for every time I heard this from an employer, I’d be a millionaire by now. Admittedly, I don’t always hear it first-hand.  It’s often the pregnant employee herself who tells me, that on her last day the boss offered what seemed like “a final farewell, even though I’m planning to come back”.   Then, the boss will deliver their parting shot: “I hope you enjoy your lovely long holiday!”  Employers, I have to ask: do you honestly think matern...

How to Support Your Employee’s Return to Work After Stress-Related Leave

Even before the Covid pandemic hit, the UK was home to a stressed-out workforce.  The Mental Health at Work Report 2018 found that one in three employees had been “formally diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point in their lives”. Fast-forward to 2022, and our mental health crisis appears to have deepened.  This year’s CIPD Health and Wellbeing at Work survey observed that mental ill health is the “top cause of long-term absence”, w...

Is there a perfect recipe for self-care?

If you had asked me this question twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Back then, I didn’t know that my brain was the most energy-expensive organ in my body.  I had no idea that every thought, interaction, and decision I made would ‘spend’ energy – a bit like drawing money from a bank account. And just like a bank account, if you keep on making withdrawals from an ever-depleting store of energy, you will end up where I was.  Exhausted, stressed, an...

Employee Support: How to Plan a Phased Return to Work (Post-Covid)

Pre-Covid, if you asked an employer for a common reason why a member of staff might take an extended period of leave, they would probably reply “maternity leave” or “sickness”.   Now, as we all know well, the landscape has shifted.  Many companies found that the existing policies they had in place weren’t able to accommodate the rapid and unprecedented changes they found themselves implementing remote working, furlough, and reduced hours, to name just a few. On top of this, m...

Beyond EAP: A Year in Review

Have you heard of a ‘round-robin letter’? Some people include these in the Christmas cards they send to their friends and family.  In the letters, they describe the year’s key events for them. While it’s easy to think of a round-robin letter as nothing more than an opportunity to boast (let’s face it, sometimes it is!), they allow your loved ones to stay in touch with the details of your life.  In a world filled with fleeting social media updates and snatched text m...

Employee Bereavement Support: Why It’s Never Just About ‘Taking Time Off’

When you imagine somebody who has recently been bereaved, what kind of person would you picture? Perhaps you thought of a weeping widow clad in black, or a child losing a beloved grandparent.  Almost certainly, the person you imagined was suffering the loss of a loved one. Bereavement is an intense experience that strikes us all in many and varied ways, sometimes when we least expect it.  However, although bereavement is a response to a personal loss, such loss isn’t always due ...

How to Manage Maternity Leave, So You Retain Happy and Talented Employees

5 Things She Could Be Thinking (But Not Saying)...Many employers think of the words “maternity leave” as a signal for change. Change as in: who’s going to provide maternity cover, and for how long?  How and when will you keep in touch with your new mum, so that when she finally returns to work, she can pick up right where she left off? Meanwhile, the new mum herself will be experiencing an overwhelming barrage of emotions, some of them for the very first time.   While i...

What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Reduced Hours after Maternity Leave!)

In September this year, Alice Thompson was awarded £185,000 by an employment tribunal.  The tribunal ruled that Alice had suffered indirect sex discrimination when her employer refused to consider her flexible working request. Alice had asked her employer, a small London estate agency, if she could work reduced hours following her maternity leave. Although she had created a detailed proposal, and “would have been more than happy to hear a counter offer, what might work for them...

EMDR Helped Prince Harry – Could This Effective, Fast-Working Therapy Help Your Employees?

As an Employee Support Coach, I have trained intensively in diverse and accredited therapies. Working with forward-thinking HR leaders, Beyond EAP provides specialist support for life’s toughest challenges.   These challenges come in many forms, and they affect all of us in different ways.   It is therefore important that I can draw upon a range of techniques for each individual employee I work with, to help them build emotional resilience for the future. One of the mo...

Why Do So Few Employees Use Their Benefits-Packed KIT Days?

I was so happy to report recently that two of the firms we support, BDB Pitmans LLP, and Winckworth Sherwood LLP, have agreed to amend their policies, now classing my planned parental coaching sessions as paid Keeping In Touch (KIT) days. These firms will not only be better able to retain talented people, but their employees are more likely to feel valued and supported during one of life’s most significant transformations. What Are KIT Days? Naturally, we are a strong advocate of these ten fle...

How Do Employers Tackle the Taboo Subject of Abortion?

Our work as employee support coaches takes us in many different directions. Put simply, we are the people whom organisations contact when an employee is struggling with an intense life challenge, such as diagnosis of a terminal illness, bereavement, depression, and starting a family.   Some employees are also referred to us before and after they have been through an abortion.   We applaud these organisations, since abortion is a taboo subject for many, and one we’...

What Happens When an Employee Issue Is Too Complex or Traumatic for EAP?

Recently, we made the important decision to re-brand the business. When we founded Confidence to Return in 2014, we wanted to focus completely on supporting new mothers, facilitating a safe, happy, and confident return to work following their maternity leave. Maternity and parental coaching remains the core of my work to this day.  However, over time the company’s services have evolved, to incorporate support for employees going through some of life’s toughest and most traumat...

Postpartum psychosis and the workplace: the value in support

As an employee maternity coaches, we have welcomed the media’s recent foray into talking about postpartum psychosis (described by the NHS as a “serious mental health illness that can affect a woman soon after she has a baby”).  That phrase “postpartum psychosis” sounds terrifying in itself, doesn’t it?  It seems completely out-of-kilter with that lovely Hollywood vision of a beautiful baby being handed to an impossibly glowing new mum. Yet when we really think about what co...

How to support your employees through miscarriage trauma

Trigger warning: includes words used to describe the surgical management of miscarriage. Society celebrates pregnant women and babies. New lives are embraced. Cards, flowers and congratulations are sent.  But every year one in four UK pregnancies – about 250,000 – end in miscarriage, which is the loss of a pregnancy in the first 24 weeks. When this happens, society is silent. The joy is replaced with ‘it’s personal’ and ‘not nice to talk about’, leaving women to face the shock...

How the aftermath of suicide ripples through generations

The two high-profile suicides of Caroline Flack, Keith Flint and Mike Thalassitis which were highlighted in the media recently, have really resonated with us. It’s been very poignant and made me recall our own family experience with suicide. It’s made me question, has much changed in mental health support since the 1970s? My grandad was 64-years-old when his body was found in the River Thames, London, by a sailor on a small boat near Westminster Bridge in the 1970s. At the Coroner’s Court,...