Employee Support
Employee Support Services
The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) recognizes that at any time a personal situation can impact the personal and/or work lives of employees or their immediate family members. The Department can provide employees with possible resources and information that may assist in addressing such situations. Internal and external services are offered to employees.
Services Provided Within GDC
Employee Assistance Program
Employees typically seek out the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) when they are faced with issues that may impact their work performance. These issues may or may not be job related. Examples of non-job related issues might be grief, spousal job loss, medical issues, divorce, financial, death, family crisis, or dealing with elderly parent. The purpose of EAP is to assist employees in finding resources to address job and non job-related situations.
GDC’s EAP involves having:
- someone with whom the employee can talk
- someone to pull together resources, information, etc. concerning a particular issue for the employee
- someone to provide guidance to the employee on Standard Operating Procedures and to refer him/her to Personnel for more specific information
- websites where employees may gather resources, articles, websites, etc. which may assist in a particular situation
Employees may locate local or nearby EAP coordinators through Captiva or by calling 404-656-4730.
Critical Incident Debriefing and Alternative Dispute Resolution
Critical Incident Debriefing (CID) is a process to assist the survivor of a traumatic event (job or non-job related – such as car wrecks, fires, tornadoes, witness to death, homicide, suicide of staff or inmate or attempted homicide or suicide, etc.) and to help with the recovery process. CID is generally requested through the employee’s Appointing Authority.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) usually involves employee/management or employee/employee disagreements. The ADR process involves informal intervention into work place disputes by a neutral third party only after all other avenues have been explored via the employee’s chain of command.
Services Provided Outside GDC
Contracted Counseling Services
Many times employees can have their needs met by talking in-house with EAP coordinators however, sometimes due to the particular situation, the employee may feel the need to seek professional help. The Department has contracted with EAP Consultants, Inc. to provide some assistance in this area. Employees, as well as their immediate family members, have access to a limited number of free and confidential counseling sessions with a licensed clinician through EAP Consultants, Inc. No referral is needed and employees, as well as their immediate family members, may call and schedule an appointment at 1-800-869-0276.
