Counselling support for BC employers and HR

How counselling gets paid for in a BC workplace

• Employee and family assistance program (EFAP), A contracted provider, a set number of short-term sessions, free to the employee, confidential from the employer. The most under-used benefit in most workplaces. This practice is not an EFAP provider; the comparison of EFAP and private counselling is on its own page.
• Extended health plan, Reimburses eligible practitioners up to an annual maximum. Whether a Registered Clinical Counsellor is eligible is a plan-design choice you or your broker made. If it is not, the single most useful change an employer can make is to add RCC and CCC to the practitioner list at renewal.
• Health spending account, Reimburses any receipt that qualifies as a medical expense, which counselling by a registered counsellor does. The flexible route where the paramedical list is narrow.
• Paid sick leave, The Employment Standards Act entitles most employees to paid sick days, and mental-health conditions count. Making it clear that a counselling appointment is a legitimate use is worth saying out loud.
• Direct payment, Possible only through a structure that keeps the employer out of the clinical relationship, such as a wellness account. The practice does not invoice employers for an individual's sessions.

What you may ask, and what you may not

An employer is entitled to functional information: that an employee cannot perform their duties or needs an accommodation, what the limitations are, and when this will be reviewed. That comes from a physician or nurse practitioner, not from a counsellor.

An employer is not entitled to a diagnosis, to treatment details, or to anything said in a session. Asking is a human-rights problem as well as a trust problem. If a leave is in play, the stress leave guide sets out the routes and the workplace mental-health resource covers accommodation and return to work in more depth.

The duty to accommodate under the BC Human Rights Code applies to mental-health disabilities. In practice it means adjusting hours, duties or location where that is reasonable, and documenting the conversation. It does not mean diagnosing or managing the condition.

What this practice can offer an employer

• Clarity, in advance, A short conversation about how employees would reach the practice, what a receipt contains, and what the plan needs to list. No contract and no cost.
• Attendance confirmation, With the employee's written consent, confirmation that they attended on given dates. Nothing about content, and never without consent.
• Sessions that fit shifts, Video sessions, evening availability depending on the counsellor, and no travel time, which is the practical difference for shift, rotational and remote workers.
• Three languages, English, Punjabi and Tagalog, which matters in workforces where the person who most needs to talk is least likely to do it in a second language.
• A straight answer about fit, If an employee needs something this practice does not provide, a psychiatric assessment, an occupational-health opinion, a crisis service, they will be told so and pointed there.

What it cannot offer

It is not an EAP and does not run one. It does not provide fitness-to-work assessments, independent medical examinations, or reports to employers or insurers about an employee's condition. It does not accept employer referrals that bypass the employee: the person books, or nobody does.

Those limits are the scope of a Registered Clinical Counsellor, and the practice would rather state them than be found out later to have implied otherwise.

Three things that change whether the benefit gets used

• Say what the EFAP actually covers, In a sentence, from a manager, in a team meeting: it is free, it is confidential, HR does not see who uses it, and it is for ordinary problems. Uptake moves.
• Fix the practitioner list at renewal, If the plan lists psychologists only, most counselling in BC is unreimbursable under it. Adding RCC and CCC is a small change with a large effect.
• Make time off for appointments normal, A counselling appointment is a health appointment. Managers who treat it as one, without asking what it is for, are doing the most useful thing on this page.