During doing my post-grad studies I investigated a research question that I am very passionate about, that being does inform participants about support pathways increase their likelihood to reach out to help. In conducting this research I partnered with one of the large transport companies located in Sydney and the outer suburbs. We performed a pre and post-program survey to assess how much participants knew about the services available if they would be comfortable recommending them to someone, and if they would contact the service themselves should they require support. The employee assistance program that was contracted to the transport company sent a representative to each session to talk about what they can help with, confidentiality, how to access the service as well among other things.

The findings from this research were somewhat surprising, in that we did see as we expected a shift in knowledge of the service and a shift in if participants would recommend the service to a peer. There was however little shift in if participants would access the service themselves, admittedly this was fairly high in the post-program surveys. Interestingly when we compared the eap utilisation data of the months prior to and after the training program there was an increase in access post the program however due to there being a number of situational events also occurring along the same timeline and we did not keep a control group as this was deemed as unethical by the business we are unable to ascertain if this was related to the program or if it was to what degree. I would like to revisit this at a later stage and address some of the limitations of the study. It would be good to pair this research with some feedback from focus groups, to better understand some of the barriers that exist to the cohort accessing this means of support or if indeed they are accessing support from other areas.