Applicability of the international program evaluation tool of Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) onto Japan

In the past few years, Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) have been rapidly penetrating into Japanese companies as a new method to manage stress of workforce in Japan. A quality assurance system for EAP, however, has not been established in Japan since EAP itself is a relatively new one. In this study, we examined an EAP program evaluation tool used by the Council on Accreditation (COA) and discussed its applicability to EAP providers in Japan. The results show that the COA standards are applicable to Japanese EAP, with some cultural adaptations added to the standards.