Most companies say they support employees through personal difficulty. Employees learn quickly where that support ends. Chris Coulter on the gap between the values board and what actually happens when someone's performance drops for six months, why low EAP utilisation is not a communications problem, and the three questions worth putting to your own leadership team this week.

A CPO showed me her benefits guide. Twenty-two pages, EAP near the back, four percent utilization. She called it a communications problem. Run any credible prevalence estimate against your headcount and the number should be forty percent or higher. So thirty-six percent of your people are carrying something and never raising a hand. This is where they went, and what reaches them when a phone number doesn't.