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Bupa expands corporate health services
16 April 2003
Bupa Wellness has bought a company specialising in the delivery of employee assistance programmes to companies. Research shows that 69 per cent of businesses with an employee assistance programme (EAP) say it delivers improvements to employee performance, with EAPs producing a 25 to 50 per cent reduction in sickness absence through the positive effects of counselling.¹
Founded 17 years ago by chartered counselling and occupational psychologist Robert Westlake The Personal Effectiveness Centre Limited (PEC) is based in south west London, employs 16 people and has a network of over 1,800 counsellors. Clients include many blue chip organisations from all business sectors including the media, manufacturing, retail, technology and pharmaceutical industries.
Catherine Brown, managing director of Bupa Wellness said: "Stress and psychological issues are areas of growing concern to most employers and this acquisition will enable us to deliver specialised psychological and counselling services to help both employers and their staff."
PEC provides a wide range of services including the main EAP services of telephone and face-to-face counselling for employees with work related or personal problems such as emotional, legal and financial issues. PEC is also a leading provider of stress management, trauma response programmes, coaching, outplacement and career support services. The company will now be known as Bupa Wellness Psychological Services.
Robert Westlake said: "Bringing together PEC and Bupa Wellness allows us to offer a complete range of corporate health services and an integrated employee and employer package from one provider which will have the maximum impact on sickness absence levels and employee wellbeing. Increasing numbers of companies are realising the value of these services. The secret to their success is to have them integrated with occupational health services and under Bupa Wellness we can now provide that one-stop shop."
This is the latest new service from Bupa designed to make private healthcare accessible to more people. It follows the launch last year of Heartbeat Heart & Cancer - lower cost medical cover for heart and cancer conditions only.
¹Counselling in the workplace - the facts: J. McLeod, University of Abertay January 2001
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